First Birthday

One year ago, Miriam was born. She was two months early, a skeleton of tiny bones draped by flaps of loose skin. Tubes stuck in her impossibly small veins and anxiety-inducing monitors screamed when she forgot to breathe at night. 
But she persisted.

She went raspberry picking at 5 weeks old and elk hunting at 2 months. She wore silly blue headphones while we pheasant hunted at 4 months and went skiing at 6. She's fished every month of the year and spent her first birthday in a little bush plane flying back from a remote lodge in Alaska. 

This weekend she camped for her birthday party on Casper Mountain, where I spent summers as a kid. She is our little miracle - a child we started to doubt would ever come to be who is more wonderful than we ever imagined. 
And she is loved.

-Christine Peterson