Happy Birthday, Beautiful

Tomorrow you turn two Lucy bug and you will have to forgive me if I am resistant to your desire to grow up, act big, and become independent - but it is all happening so fast. There were so many questions that I was supposed to find answers to when you were a baby, still tiny and fitting so easily in the crook of my arm while I rocked you and daydreamed about the things we would do and convinced myself that I am not crazy for bringing you into this world. Back then when you were first born and still now you reminded me, constantly, that you will always be an island of perfection for me in this imperfect place, my constant assurance that there is good and wonder and light.

There is no doubt that you are growing up and so I am forced to make a memory of things that I love the most, as if it were possible to pick...

I love that you still ask me to rock you to sleep at night. It is the same routine that has been in place since you were born, the same routine that has survived through sometimes slight and sometimes profound variation over the course of the last two years. It started with rocking in proper chairs like the one we picked out for your nursery before you were born and then there was rocking in borrowed chairs and on the edges of double beds and in the corners of dark, quiet closets - tiny places of solace and peace set aside for you when you had no room to call your own. And now, in the place you know best, in your room designed from top to bottom by your father and me to be precisely the most wonderful, comfortable place imaginable, the type of place we wanted to be able to give you in the very beginning and couldn't.

I love that when we are rocking you still ask me to read Tumble Bumble, just as we have every night of your life and notwithstanding the fact that you have the entire book memorized and are often overheard reciting it to your dolls. You want to hear it from me, in my voice, with my commentary and if nothing else about my day is predictable I know, at least, that you will want me to read Tumble Bumble and I know that I can do that right.

I love that as you are drifting off to sleep you name all of the parts of my face - eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and giggle hysterically and then you ask me to do the same and to tell you all about what you were like as a baby and what I would do to make you laugh.

And now you are not a baby at all, each day becoming a bit further removed from what you were like when you needed my help to do the simplest of things. Now you can and want to do everything on your own. You dress yourself, parade around the house in my shoes 'running errands', beg to drive the car, talk on cell phones, read books to yourself and your animals, change and feed your babies, feed yourself, recite your favorite songs, list your favorite characters, name your favorite animals, shout your ABCs, count to ten and twenty and sometimes in Spanish and almost have me convinced that you are ready to be out of diapers. You speak in complete sentences and have no trouble getting your point across. You understand directions and convey your thoughts with ease. You have a great sense of humor, even if we do not always agree. I promise one day you will understand why I do not think Goofy is funny. You are courteous and always ask permission, beginning your requests with, "can I..." It is polite and lovely. Your most admirable trait is your sensitivity and sympathetic nature. You are able to recognize sadness almost instantly and are always there to comfort someone with kind words and hugs.

You are all of these incredible things and have become this person in just two years and I can only imagine what you will do tomorrow, much less in your lifetime. Instead of all the questions and the lingering doubts, the only questions now are, "why do I deserve this and will I be able to hold up my end of the deal?" You filled my head with grace and my heart with love and there is no room any more for the questions that plagued me. All there is room for now is the joy and the light that is you, and for even a day of that I am the luckiest person in the world.



Happy Birthday Baby Girl