Tomorrow You Are Two

Dear Emma,

Tomorrow you are two. The other morning, I brought you to bed with me and you fell asleep after nursing. We snuggled up and I breathed in the smell of your hair and fell back to sleep alongside you. For a brief moment, I was taken back to the early months of your life when you spent the nights sleeping next to me and napped cradled in my arms.

It seems like yesterday you came barreling into this world eager to join our family, bringing with you healing for my broken places and so much curiousity and wonder about any and everything.

“Wass dat?” is your new favorite question. You’re gaining new words at breakneck speeds, soaking them in and spitting them back out in that tiny, adorable voice of yours.

Watching you discover the world has been one of the greatest–and sometimes most stressful–parts of the past two years. You are eager to know and learn and go and do. As cliche’ as it might sound, don’t ever lose that sense of wonder. (And remind me to teach you what a cliche’ is someday, too.)

While you have play mates at school, each of whom you must hug goodbye every afternoon, your big brother is your favorite friend. Joshua positively hangs the moon for you. Whatever he does, you have to do, too. Sometimes he’s a jerk, but that’s what brothers do. No matter how he acts, he’s your biggest fan.

Well, he’s your biggest fan next to me and your dad.

I can’t lie. Sometimes you make me more than a little bonkers trying to climb out of the grocery cart or up the bookshelf or onto the kitchen table. Sometimes you push boundaries I wish you wouldn’t push.

But there’s a part of me who revels in your desire to push those boundaries. There’s a part of me who sees your strength and tenacity and sits back and cheers while watching you confront life head on.

Recently you’ve decided to start dressing yourself. “I do it!” you say, and you do. Sometimes both legs end up in the same side of your pants, or you put your brother’s underwear on sideways to wear as a diaper cover under your dresses, but you manage to get it done. I marvel at the independence so deeply ingrained already in your tiny two-year-old body.

Two.

Two years of your life lived already and decades more to go.

I love you, little girl. From now until forever.

Love,

Mama