08/14/2026
Happy Birthday Lia!
Today marks fifteen months of Vera, which means we are somewhere in the middle of a difficult yet amazing stretch of our lives, and I have watched you move through all of it with an intention that still inspires me. I always knew you would be a wonderful mother, but what I could not have known was how you would go about it. There are plenty of days where we are just trying to get by, where every other part of life gets whatever is left over, but that has never been true of Vera. She is where the energy goes. She is where the love and the attention go. Watching you make that choice over and over has shown me what parenthood looks like at its best, and it shows in everything about her.
You have done all of that while working full time and excelling at it, in a season that already moves fast, during years where life in general seems to be picking up speed and getting harder to slow down. Somehow you are the one who slows it down anyway. You are the reason we take the walk through the vineyard with the dogs at sunset, the reason we spend Sundays at the river or in the mountains, when there is a list of things that could have been done instead. You have always been intentional about those moments, and I admire that more than almost anything.
It has not always been easy, thats for sure, but as a team we have pulled off some things I am so proud of, and so much of that comes down to you. You handle hard things with a patience and grace I am still learning from, and somehow you have kept showing up for your friends, which is usually the first thing to fall away in parenthood. You care about the people around you in a way that makes me want to be better at it myself.
You are beautiful, you are a parent I look up to, and I cannot wait to see what you build for yourself in the years ahead. Mostly I just want to keep living this life next to you.
Happy birthday. I love you, as do so many!
