Oldest Niece

I was looking at pictures on my sister in-law's FB and I ran across this picture of Natalie, who is the oldest grand daughter in the family. She is currently 8 yrs old, and when I look at this picture I feel like the essence/ spirit of innocents is in her eyes. She was such an adorable little girl with such a silly personality. Her little voice . . . I can still hear what it sounds like. My dad bought my mom a picture frame where you can record things on it to play when you press a button. At first it was him telling her something sweet but it soon was recorded over with grand babies voices. And the last one I heard was Natalie saying, "Nana! Nana! Come! Come Nana! Come. . ." It was SOOOOOO cute. I think, since Natalie is the oldest, when I look at old pictures of her I feel like a lot of time has passed by because she has changed and grown so very much. I mean. . . I remember when she was born! She has been the ONLY niece of mine that I was there when she was first born. I was out of state with the rest of the nieces when they came along.

Even though she's growing up, becoming tooo cool for certain things, and making her own opinion on things. . . she'll always be this little "monkey" to me. She'll always be that silly, goofy, crazy girl who can make herself laugh sooo hard that she turns purple. Also the little girl who carries her cat around by the waste. And even though I know if she had the choice to have dinner with either Hannah Montana or myself, she'd pick HM without blinking. I still love her to pieces.

I guess that's love . . . and the closest thing I can relate to parental love. She was the first to evoke that unconditional, for no prior reason being, etc kind of love. The first time I saw her and held her I knew I would die for her.