Dear Juliette

It’s been almost 24 hours since you entered the world and you have already made a remarkable impression. I’ll admit you have a tough act to follow as your older sister Josie is pretty awesome, and since she was the only baby I had before you, it is hard to not look at things through the lens of raising her. But you and I have something in common: we’re both the younger sibling. I, too, have had to follow in large footsteps, and I know what it feels like. And I am proud of what I have done for myself. A very large part of that now involves bringing you into the fold. So let’s talk about you simply through the lens of you.

So far, everything about you seems perfect. You’ve already been opening your eyes a lot and looking around and you even had a pretty impressive head-lift moment mere minutes after you were born. You came out relatively easily and if you want to hold a couple things over your sister, let it be this: you were much easier in the delivery room, and your very routine poop schedule means we will get to bring you home sooner. Your sister, on the other hand, went on a poop strike after her birth which caused us a bit of a delay.

Speaking of which, your older sister Josie was incredibly excited to meet you. She FaceTimed you in the morning and was jumping up and down with excitement to come and meet you. Then she came into the hospital and she held you for the first time. Most older siblings are jealous when their younger sibling is born, but maybe there is something special about you. She gave you many hugs and we had to explain to her that she cannot give you kisses yet.

For the time being, you are very quiet and very small but you love being held. Leading up to you being born, I was relatively calm because I had been through this before. But the moment you came out, I was overcome with emotion and started crying tears of joy. When I got to hold you for the first time, I again could not stop that emotion from overpowering me. It is hard to tell now, but you are going to grow up to become something incredible, and holding you now on the cusp of that potential before it has unfolded is a really unique emotion.

I wish there were a couple people around for you to meet. Our dog, Jack, passed away just a couple months ago. He was a very sweet dog and you would have loved him. I know we will get a new dog that you will grow up with, but it still makes me sad that you never got to know Jack. He was and always will be considered a part of our family, so someday when you are older we will show you videos. You will still get to meet our cat, Zoe.

I also wish you got to meet my grandmother. She died almost a year and a half ago. She was over the moon when Josie was born and I would kill to see her reaction knowing that you came into the world. Just know that somewhere she is up there watching over you with a smile. 

I’m excited for you because I think me and your mom got the hang of how to do this parenting thing. Hopefully you’re getting us a little more “warmed up.” I’m mostly excited for you to have a best friend and older sister. No matter what happens, there is one very important lesson I want you to learn from me: I want you to be your own person. No matter what anyone else around you does or says, all I care about is that you follow your passion and you do what you are best-served to do in this life. 

In big moments like this one, I am reminded how everything I have done in my entire life was to prepare me for this moment right now to help you make a name for yourself in this world. As adults, we all wish we could have done better here or there in moments of our lives. Our children are an outlet for us to achieve that. So I hope you know I will pour everything into making sure you can reach your wildest dreams.

To that end, please know how much great care your mom took with you. She followed every rule during her pregnancy and did not cheat in any way whatsoever. She is a top-notch student in the parenting game and gives 100% to making sure you will have the best chance of success in health and in life. It’s a lot easier for me to sit on the sidelines and watch. I am sure someday when you are older it will be easy to lose sight of this. I just want you to know that your parents dropped everything to make you a number one priority. That included going to the hospital a little bit early for the avoidance of doubt of some potential health risks we wanted to avoid with you. So far, it’s turning out to be a good decision.

Juliette, I thought that when I had one child that I would not be able to love another child as much as I loved the first one. I want to be honest with you about that. But you have already shown me that it was silly to worry. My heart has doubled in size, and we are just getting started. I will always be here for you – nothing will stand in my way.

I love you,

Dad