an important milestone

yesterday morning i caught this little girl destroying my closet and trying on my shoes. trying on my shoes!!! lately baby has been doing an incredible amount of new developmental tricks. she opens lids and puts them back on. she steers her push toy (and boxes). she can walk backwards. she steps into her pant legs and pushes her arms through her shirt sleeves. she attempts to put on her own shoes.

but for her to go in my closet and try on pair after pair of my own shoes?!?! that marked a very special day for me! does there exist a more significant motherly milestone?!?! indeed there does not.

i know she looks like my clone (which, oh my goodness i had another person at church tell me they could see so much of her DAD in her --- that is always a little (a lot) bittersweet for me), my mini-me, myself reincarnated but really? i want her to want to BE like me too.

for me, my mother has always been the person to be. i'm always striving to be as giving, as selfless, as humble, as honest, as hardworking, as patient, as faithful, as serving as my mother. in college i wrote a paper on how my mother was the most perfect example of honesty i'd ever seen. i wrote story after story illustrating how she went above and beyond. and how she inspired me to be honest in all things. i used to have a hard copy and a digital copy of that paper. i have since lost both. i don't think my mother ever even got the chance to read it. but honestly (no pun intended!), what does it matter? because i have her, and every day, i have more examples of her perfect honesty.

y'know that primary song, i'm trying to be like jesus? well, i'm trying to be like jesus. but i'm also trying to be like my mother. lucky for me, she's so christ-like that it's really the same thing.

i just want to be christlike enough that my little daughter will want to be like me too.