Meet Eva Elena

This is Eva.  She is my middle daughter, and I adore her.  I mean truly adore her.  I love all of my girls, obviously.  But, Eva is special.  She is smart, strong, and athletic.  Most importantly, though, she is the sweetest child I've ever met.  She is thoughtful and sensitive.  Eva is the first one to come running if someone needs help, and she will often get upset if she sees anyone else crying. 
Unfortunately, this child struggles immensely.  She is painfully shy.  I don't mean the average "bashful among strangers" shy.  There are members of our extended family that have never heard Eva's voice.  She spent almost an entire year of preschool without speaking at school.  Now, in her second year at the elementary school, it still takes her several months to utter more than two words to anyone. 
At home, she's a bright shining light of happy.  In public, it's like she turns the lights off and shuts the curtains.  It's painful to watch her at recess (yes, I'm an occasional playground stalker).  I stay up nights worrying about whether she'll have friends as she grows up.  School is hard enough without adding the inability to socialize into the mix.  I've tried all I can think of to help her, but I know that she's going to have to do a lot of it herself.
There's another issue that I see looming on the horizon, however.  It's something I've been faced with for several years, but it hasn't come to Eva's attention yet.  See, not only is she the middle child, she's stuck in between two sisters.  Two sisters who get stopped every time they go somewhere by someone wanting to tell them how pretty they are.  People who will say, in front of Eva, how gorgeous one or both of the other sisters are.  People are thoughtless.  I think that all of my girls are adorable.  And, truth be told, Eva was definitely the cutest of the babies.  Working against her, though, is that she's built exactly like her papi.  She is short and round, just like every member of his family.  Her sisters are long and lean.  I worry (notice that I worry much?) that she's always going to feel "different" from them.  I don't need any of them to be popular.  And, I certainly don't want them being chased by boys.  But, I don't want her to be the sister that never gets asked to a dance.  Or the one that is overshadowed by one or both of the other girls.  I want her to feel how perfectly beautiful she is - even if no one else sees it.  How do I do that?  How do I make other people see that Eva is no less pretty than her sisters.  Beauty is subjective, I know.  But, anyone who can look in those big brown eyes and not see that it doesn't come any more perfect than Eva has no right to form an opinion on anything... least of all beauty.
So, this is Eva.  She's smart, strong, athletic, and beautiful.  And, I adore her.