{"id":4223,"date":"2015-04-08T22:46:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T05:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/?p=4223"},"modified":"2015-04-08T22:50:26","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T05:50:26","slug":"happy-12-gracie-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/?p=4223","title":{"rendered":"Happy 12, Gracie Girl!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"DSC_2209 by Voris, on Flickr\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/voris\/16464897943\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"DSC_2209\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7707\/16464897943_6036ac00b4.jpg\" width=\"331\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dear Gracie Girl,<\/p>\n<p>Wow, it has been a bit of a rollercoaster of a year now, hasn&#8217;t it? Sometimes I wonder how in the world you can be turning 12, while at the same time thinking &#8220;huh, you are <em><strong>only<\/strong><\/em> 12?!&#8221; It has been a hard year for me now that you are an &#8220;almost teenager&#8221; and a full-on middle schooler. I&#8217;m trying desperately to walk that fine line between letting you go &#8211; an independent little birdie stretching your wings, and pulling you back onto my lap &#8211; keeping you safely tucked into our little nest.<\/p>\n<p>So, I think I have been doing fairly well, refraining from posting stories and\/or embarrassing anecdotes here on the &#8216;ol blog. But just for a moment, on today&#8230;your 12th birthday, I think I should be allowed to gush about my girl for maybe a minute or two? So hold back your &#8220;Moooommm&#8217;s!&#8221; and your eye-rolling and let me just say this, real quick.<\/p>\n<p>Gracie, I just look at you every day and am pretty much in awe of this young lady standing in front of me (and yes, I might not have to look down any longer, but I&#8217;m still not quite looking UP at you&#8230;yet.). You are pretty much the daughter that any parent could ever hope to raise. You are loving and kind, smart and funny, beautiful inside and out. And I&#8217;m pretty sure you will never know the full extent of how proud of you we are, but I hope you do know how very much we love you and hope that your 12th year is your best yet!<\/p>\n<p>#endproudmamarant<\/p>\n<p>Ok, I&#8217;m done. I promise to not embarrass you any more.\u00a0For another year at least.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Birthday, sweet girl.<br \/>\nLove you,<br \/>\nMama<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Gracie Girl, Wow, it has been a bit of a rollercoaster of a year now, hasn&#8217;t it? Sometimes I wonder how in the world you can be turning 12, while at the same time thinking &#8220;huh, you are only &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/?p=4223\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/psMOS-167","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4223"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4223"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4225,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4223\/revisions\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/barelycontrolledchaos.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}