Letter To My Newborn Daughter

Last Tuesday evening at 6:19 p.m. PST, my wife gave birth to our first child, a 7-pound, 9-ounce, 21-inch little girl named Leeya Eliana. The labor was long, approximately 26 hours, and my wife endured it heroically. Before, we were a married couple; now, we are a family.

On the sixth day of her life, I wrote my little girl a letter to memorialize our hopes for her at the dawn of her life. With my wife’s permission, here it is:

Dear Leeya Eliana,

This is Daddy and Mommy writing to you. You are now six days old, and you are tiny and cute, and you poop a lot – and you get really mad when anybody tries to change you. But you are also sweet and calm, and you look at us with your huge blue-gray eyes, and we love you so much because we know that not only are you a manifestation of how much Mommy and Daddy love each other, but you are the future of the Jewish people and the American people, and that we are preserving God’s word and His freedom for the next generations. That’s why we gave you your name: Leeya — in Hebrew, “I Belong To God.”

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