Feelings For Frances

I love my Frances. She's my first born, so of course that makes her totally awesome in every way. Everything she does is genius, every new milestone is a first.

She's also my only brown-eyed child. In my family of all blue/green eyed people, she really stands out (though her eyes are so dark that we can't see her pupils -- an important point when she would fall off the bed as a baby and we had to check to make sure she was OK).

She's my straight arrow. She makes us toe the line and is quick to point out if we're not following the rules. She's my enforcer of grocery budgets and the one who makes sure we say a prayer before driving in the snow.

She loves to sing, play the piano, dance, and draw. She's also super good at arithmetic, though it pains me to see as she gets older that she's starting to think that "math is boring" or "girls don't like math." We have to sneak it in to keep her skills up (she's a whiz at doubling fractions for recipes -- she also loves to cook).

The best thing I love about Frances? Her compassion. There's a boy in her class who obviously has some problems and every day is a struggle for him. He has the same last name as my family, so I used to jokingly tell her to be really nice to him because I didn't want to bump into him at a family reunion and find out that he's a distant cousin and she was mean to him. A few weeks later I got a note from her teacher saying that Frances always goes out of her way to help this boy out with his schoolwork and protects him when the other kids pick on him for being different.

Oh Frances, the world would be much different if everyone was like you -- and I think you will do your part to make it a better place.