to my darling girl on her second birthday
It is two in the morning now and the house is dark and quiet. You have been asleep for hours in your christmas jammies, clutching your beloved doggie. I hope you're dreaming of sugarplums and clementines (your new favorite food). I'm not dreaming at all baby, I am wide awake and probably always will be around this time on this day for as long as I live. Because you see today, right now in fact, two years ago I was changed forever. We went through hours of hell together to get to heaven - being in each others arms, finally. We both cried that night, you out of hunger and me because I felt in that first instant that my skin touched yours that I would never be the same.
You were a force to be reckoned with from the very beginning. Everything happened on your time and to your liking. Though the days were long and hard, the rewards surpassed it all. The first time I saw your smile one cold bright february morning while papa was at work and I had you all to myself, I knew that people would always say of you "she had a smile that lit up the room." And then you laughed and I thought my heart would break from joy. As the months passed and we got to know you more, we loved you more and more. You made our home brighter, louder and infinitely more fun and you've made us better people too.
You've made your mama and papa more down to earth, selfless, easy going and more game for a laugh. Your presence humbles us daily and we hope gives us added wisdom, though doubtful. Your spirit is strong and epic and we pray that we treasure it and care for it without breaking it. But more than anything we love how inquisitive you are. You devour the world before you with an eagerness unlike anything we've ever seen. Even before you could really talk you were able to mumble "wasthat?" and you repeated it a million times daily about everything from an airplane to a piece of lint on the ground. Now it's become "what happened??" I hope you never lose this curiosity. I hope even when you're thirty or forty-five or sixty you still find things daily that make you say "what's that? what happened?"
I'll never sleep through two am on December 11 because that forever marks the moment that I become a mother, the moment I got the greatest gift in the world - YOU. Before that moment I was someone else - someone weaker, more selfish, complicated and unsure. Thank you for coming in and knocking down all my walls, erasing my selfishness and doubts and filling all that empty space with so much love that every day it feels as if my heart could burst. I love you more than you will ever know.
kisses always,
mama