Darling Daughter #2

Let’s talk about Sophia Rose Bodenbach. She is darling daughter #2 and my middle monster. She is our family fashionista, a lover of books, plants and animals. Her birthday is May 8th and she is going to be 24. Yup, I actually have a 24 year old daughter.

Sophie greatly resembles my mom. Like my mom is the middle daughter of three girls. And both she and my mom have moms named Gertrude.

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Sophie once proclaimed herself “The Princess of the Kingdom of Joy”. With that single proclamation she summed herself up pretty well. She’s been bringing joy to our family since the very beginning.

When she was a baby around 18 months old, she went from barely speaking to suddenly speaking in complete sentences. She hasn’t stopped talking since.

When she was little we always called her Soph, and when asked, that’s what she would tell people her name was. So, I had to teach her that her name was really Sophie. She was ok with being Sophie. But then I had to break it to her that her name is really Sophia. She didn’t like that at all. She would tell me with quite a bit of attitude “I no Sophie-UH!”.

But she’s not only a talker, she is also a deep thinker…we’ll talk about that later.

As a baby she had this great blonde hair that grew to be about 4” long on top and it just stood straight up and waved in the wind. It was the cutest thing. There was no making it lie down. Eventually it grew out and she had these big beautiful “cheerleader” curls. They looked like something someone worked really hard at. But then when she got her first hair cut the curls were gone and they never came back. She’s always had enough hair for 6 kids though—literally. She grew it out once and then got it cut off to donate. They seriously put her hair into 6 large pony tails and then cut them off.

Since then she has had blue hair, purple hair, short hair, long hair, you name it.

She’s always been a bit of a hippie girl with an eclectic wardrobe of fun colors and flowing long skirts. And this girl loves a good resale shop where she finds interesting vintage clothes and a big clunky Doc Martin boots.

In the past couple of years she’s started an Instagram account where she talks about books she is reading but the photos she takes of books and posts there are just phenomenal. Really, when she first started I would scroll through and always be in awe of her beautiful photos and then one day I realized that it was Sophie, my very own kid who was posting those amazing photos and I was just blown away. Everything about them is beautiful. Here is one of her photos. ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

One photo is just more beautiful than the next. I keep telling her she could sell them or teach other people how to take pictures like she does and she could probably make a bunch of money doing it.

Two years ago she graduated from college with two degree—a degree in English and a degree in Social Work. She has put those both to work by working in both a social service agency and at the same time in a library. For several years, spring through fall, she has also worked at a local farmer’s market. She is a young woman with many interests and she feeds them all.

Sophie is the daughter who likes to go shopping with me (I tell her it’s so I can buy her love.) She likes to cook. She likes to decorate. She loves animals. She’s just a really interesting person because she is interested in so many things.

On top of all of that, she is, as I mentioned earlier, my deep thinker.

Once when she was about 3 years old, she came and woke me up around 4:00 in the morning…she wanted to know what hippopotamus’s eat. And she hasn’t stopped thinking since then. She reads a lot. She cares a lot. She has a huge heart. When she still lived at home she would often just come and lay on my bed and talk to me for long periods of time about anything and everything. It was wonderful.

Sophie thinks so much and has always had so many questions that the girl just wears me out sometimes. She’s never satisfied with the easy answer. She has challenged my thinking in so many ways. Sometimes I haven’t liked it much. Sometimes it has been hard to hear. But she has made me a better person. She has made me ask more questions and think harder about things. I’m thankful for that.

It’s been a really good 24 years. It’s gone by in the blink of an eye but it’s been an absolute joy watching Sophie grow into the woman she is today. She’s already made the world a better place and I’m pretty sure she’s just getting started!

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Happy Birthday Sophie Rose! I love you!