Handprints

Dear Princess,

I have two pictures on my computer of us in these shirts, but I posted this one because we were being silly, and silly pictures were always your favorite.  The date on this is wrong... it was actually October, and you were five.  We made these shirts on the front porch that day - yours is covered in your handprints, M's is covered in her handprints, and mine is covered in both of your handprints.  I also had you guys help me make a canvas bag with both of your handprints - and I still have both the bag and the shirt.

We poured the fabric paint out on paper plates and had you put your hands in it, then on the shirts.  It was so hard to get you, in particular, to just go from plate to shirt, then rinse your hand off in the water.  You wanted to touch EVERYTHING!  In fact, there's a little pink spot on the corner of my shirt because you just  couldn't wait to touch it.  But that was okay, because those little imperfections were what made the finished product so perfect.  It was a reminder of how much fun we had being messy and silly and not worrying about the little things.  M actually put a big blue handprint on the front porch, which I thought would wash off in the rain and weather, but here we are four and a half years later, and there's still a little blue 9-year-old M handprint on my front porch!  I smile every time I see it - and I wish you'd slipped up and left a handprint there too.

After they dried (which you were so impatient for) we took all our pictures in them.  I can't count how many of these pictures I actually took... someone was always looking away, being silly, we couldn't get it right.  Finally we got a nice one of all of us smiling, so we cut loose and did a silly one.  Again, your favorite.  You were at this stage where you liked to put your fingers in the air like that when you were posing and stick your tongue out - I have so many pictures of you in this same pose.  Such a funny girl.

I sent your shirt home with you.  I don't have it now, I wish I did.  I don't know what happened to it.  But I still have your little handprints.  I'll always have that handprint covered bag and that shirt, even though I've mended the bag by hand more than once... and they'll always be a memory, a moment caught in time, of the little hands that made them.

Love you forever,
Katie