Dear Landon,
Today marks TEN years circling the sun and with each season your light shines brighter. Early this morning I re-read an amazing poem “Welcome to Holland.” I was given this poem when you were tiny, only a couple months old, at your first speech school. As I held you on my chest, I read the story about a beautiful place full of wonder and unexpected beauty.
The story describes how mommas prepare for the birth of their children much like planning an extensive trip to another country. The momma would read about the country, learn the language, and pack her bags. But when she finally gets off the plane, the flight attendant welcomes her to a different country than she expected. It is a place of immense beauty, a place of wonder- full of tulips and windmills and incredible art. Instead of where she thought she was going, she went to Holland. It’s different than what she’d expected in the most marvelous of ways and teaches the everyone who sees it incredible things about themselves and the world through its differences.
You are like Holland, my girl. You are this miraculous wonder that filled our hearts with beauty and love we never knew before that morning a decade ago. You are tremendously talented – with how you love, in creating friendships, with seeing the best in people and in your strength. In this past year, you’ve made the intentional choice to share more of your story and what makes you awesome with the world so that others might choose to be kinder or see themselves in you.
You have a fantastic imagination and create vivid spaces for your collection of dragons and dinosaurs to live. You live for the adventure- swinging, climbing, back bending, lizard capturing and bird feather hunting. You are one amazing sister- teaching, playing, swinging, and patiently allowing your sisters to be all of themselves even if they are both loud 
. You love your parents deeply for each of our unique selves and make blending easy. You are love, my bug. You are my life. I love you so much and marvel at what a decade of life has been like as your mother.
With all that I am, love mommy
