It’s hard to believe that it was just a year ago to this date that we held our little girl in our arms for the first time. Charlotte had arrived three weeks early, but it was like we had been waiting for her for so long already The emotion that comes when you experience being a parent for the first time is hard to describe, unless you’ve already felt it. She filled a void in our hearts that we never even knew was there to start with. Now it’s hard to imagine our life without her. Even through all the days when her teeth are torturing her, she can still bring a smile to our faces. When she wakes up in the morning and smiles at us with a cheerful ‘hey!’ or ‘hi!’ it makes every morning worth waking up.
We’ve had to learn and grow as business owners and parents over the last year. There are some days when we have to make a choice – whether to tend to her needs or put business first. It has taught us to focus on what areas are important in business, and let some things go that can be done another day. We might not need to make as many posts on social media as we think we do, and maybe that thing that we think we need to post about can just wait for another day. For us, a life isn’t worth living, if family can’t come first. In future years looking back on our lives, we would rather say that we spent the time we had making memories with each other, than being known as parents who were always parked in front of a computer. If you’re a parent running your own business, you might be feeling this too. I can say to you – we get it. It’s challenging enough to be a parent, yet alone run a successful business. Our goal has always been to make home life and business life integrate together as seamlessly as possible, so that we can maximize our time together as a family. We are still learning every day!
So today on her first birthday, we put aside work for the time being and spent the day reveling in little baby joys together. We visited the butterfly room, and checked out the birdies and fish at the pet store. We woof-woofed at puppies together, played with balloons, and visited our newest nephew who was just born this morning and now shares a birthday with our Charlotte. And of course, we took some pictures. Because this little girl has so many smiles, and one day we will look back on these days with tears of joy, and realize just how fast the time has gone. But she’ll always be our baby girl.
