Happy 1st Birthday, Kate!

April 30, 2015

Dear Kate,

You don’t know this, but today is your first birthday.  It’s the reason we’ve all been watching you with wonder this week and saying, “I can’t believe it” over and over. How can it be that your first year has already come and gone? They say things go by faster with the second child, and they are right. It seems like just yesterday that I was panicked, peeing on pregnancy tests every hour because they kept coming back negative, and I just absolutely refused to believe that to be true. Your dad thought I was nuts and was calmly convinced that I was pregnant. (And, of course, he was right. Probably on both counts, if we’re being honest.)

My pregnancy with you was far different from my pregnancy with your sister. Truthfully, there were times when life got so hectic that I would forget I was pregnant for a while, only to remember suddenly and with staggering joy that your heart was beating fast and strong beneath my own. I would put my hand over your little bean-body and sit, just quietly, for a moment or two – the only time we really had as “just us” was fleeting and fast. 

Some of my favorite moments of my pregnancy with you were shared, though.  Every single night, Sarah sat on my lap – even as you took up more and more of it – and the two of us sang “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to you.  She was so excited and proud to become a big sister, and she (like me and Daddy) has loved you with abandon since the moment she learned of your existence.

And you, my dear, do truly twinkle. Your smile lights up a room, and everyone (EVERYONE) comments constantly on your happy-go-lucky personality.  And mostly you are a happy girl – unless you’re hungry!  You are an insatiable eater, consuming three to four courses in a meal, and then demanding more mere minutes after we finish. You refused baby food from the second you realized there was food that you could stuff into your mouth by yourself. You love cheese, avocado, puffs, and noodles. The only food (and I do mean ONLY) we’ve found that you don’t seem to enjoy is mango.

You are also one determined little girl. Every time you try to imitate your sister, the look in your eye screams, “Anything you can do, I can do better!” And if the look itself doesn’t scream it, you use your voice and scream at the very top of your lungs. You are a shrieker, and I’m pretty sure half the neighborhood is convinced that we’re frightening piglets in our living room each night.

You are inquisitive. You shake things and try to stack and sort things all the time.  You put everything in your mouth. You love to put small things inside larger things.  

You are active. You went from rolling over to running in (what felt like) 3.5 seconds. You’ll climb anything, and you love to swing and slide in our backyard. You throw your pacifiers out of your crib like they are live grenades and you can bang on a table like no one else. You mastered climbing the steps about a day and a half after you learned to crawl, and you howl with so much agony when we put up the baby gate that we’ve just decided to risk potential injury and let you climb with abandon.

You are musical. You bounce and clap along to songs with infectious glee, and you try to hum along with me when I sing “You Are My Sunshine” each night at bedtime. You love to breathe into the harmonica and Sarah’s plastic recorder to make your own music, and you laugh and laugh when I sing and dance in the middle of the kitchen for you.

You are joyful. You smile easily and laugh readily. Sometimes, all it takes is for me to pretend to tickle you for you to fall on the floor in a fit of laughter. You laugh hysterically as you put blankets, towels, and discarded clothes over your head and then pull them off to surprise us all with the fact that you have not, in fact, disappeared entirely.

You are beautiful. Your gorgeous blue eyes and gap-toothed grin have, literally, stopped strangers in their tracks. But even more than your external beauty, the beauty of your personality shines in everything you do.

Last night, when I put you to bed on your 364th day of life – that last day you were ever less than a whole year old – I held you just a little longer than I usually do.  I realized that it was one day less you of you as my chubby-cheeked, downy-haired, diapered baby. Each day is one step closer to you as a child, running away from me and toward your life, and so I savored your warm weight in my arms, listened closely as your breathing slowed and became more regular, and watched as your eyes closed and you drifted off to sleep.  I thought about our first night together, alone in the hospital – just you and me.  I had held you then, too, as you slept – new and breath-taking – in my arms, and I made you a foolish promise.

That first night of your life, I buried my nose in your newborn hair, and I whispered that I would make every effort to give you the same attention and experiences we had gave your sister when she was a baby. I promised to fill out your baby book, completely and totally. (I have it filled in, but the pictures, sadly, remain on my computer rather than in the book.) I promised to snuggle with you and sing to you and spend hours marveling at the amazingness that is YOU. I promised to expose you to art and music and literature, to encourage you to play with educational toys, to feed you homemade goodness without exposure to sweets and artificial colors.  I promised to make your experience the same as hers had been – and that is where I went horribly, terribly wrong.

You see, my love, you will just never have the same experiences your sister had.  And you shouldn’t, because you are not her. You are my little Kater-tot, my ray of sunshine, my joy.  And your experiences will always and forever be a little “less” than Sarah’s experiences. The first-time parent fog that comes with the exhaustion of questioning everything, worrying about anything, and absorbing almost nothing has been far LESS. With you, we actually rolled calmly and peacefully through most of your first year, truly enjoying watching you transform from a tiny little thing into a slightly larger human – which never really happened for Sarah. The fear of taking you out into the wide, wide world to encounter all of the amazing things in life has been LESS, too. You were in Yellowstone National Park, 10 feet away from a full-grown bison (granted, you were in the car and the bison was not!) at 7 weeks old. You went on the rickety old ski lift that goes over the zebras and giraffes at the zoo at two months old. You’ve been to the pumpkin patch and the farmers’ market. You’ve taken car rides and train rides and hayrides and carousal rides. You’ve eaten ice cream and bell peppers and bbq ribs.  In short, everything about your life has been LESS than it was for your sister. But because of that, it has also been so very much MORE.  And know this, my darling girl, the love has never – will never – be LESS with you.

And so, on the eve of your first birthday, I made you a new promise, Kate. Your life will not be the same as your sister’s.  And I will stop trying to make it be the same as hers.  Your life will be your own experience, full of your own joys and fears and loves.  It was silly and selfish of me to think that you would want have what your sister had, because you will never, ever have the same experiences in the same way that she did. You will walk your own path and dream your own dreams.

Kate, on her first birthday, I thanked your sister for making me a mother. Today, I thank you for giving me my encore performance. You were the piece of me I didn’t know was missing, all along. You make me want to be better and do better, not only as a mother, but as a human being. I know that you are destined for great things, no matter which path you choose in life. But for now, I just ask that you walk slowly and hold my hand. I never want to lose the feeling of you wrapping your arms around my neck and burring your face in my neck, for in that embrace, the world is perfect.

Happy first birthday, baby girl.

I love you always, and with all my heart.

Love,

Mommy