She is two years old when it happens.
Something I never thought would happen to me.
I feel longing.
I look at her and she is so beautiful,
so full of life,
so full of everything I was afraid she would be filled with,
everything I am so apt to love just too much.
She is equal parts Peeta and I,
with something all her own.
She is sweet and gentle and she loves to bake with her daddy,
looking back at me with his blue, blue eyes.
But she is stubborn,
and sometimes I'll look into those eyes and she'll crinkle her nose
and I know this is what Peeta sees
every time I'm about to get my way.
I have a feeling we'll both be the cause of more than a few of his gray hairs.
But, he's the one who sought a family with one of the most stubborn women on God's green earth,
so I don't feel so bad for him.
It seems all at once very long ago
and just like a blink away that she was a tiny, tiny creature
whose body I could fit in two hands.
And I miss that.
And so I am longing.
For the first time,
I am the one to ask Peeta.
And he plants one of his lopsided, loopy grins on his face
(the same one he gave me the night I told him she was on her way)
but he is not at all surprised.
I guess he knows me better than I know myself,
because I never saw this coming.
But my heart,
it feels the love she brings us,
feels it so much it seems as though it might burst
every time I see her dimples when she smiles really big,
or I hear her weak knock on our bedroom door every morning,
or I feel her chubby little arms close around my shoulders.
And I want more of it.