two

My Sweetith Edith,

Edy, how could you possibly be 2?  I look at you and see this long-legged baby with a freakishly good vocabulary, but nonetheless, my baby.

I want to write to you about the silly things I taught you; like eating a can of whipped cream off your finger, singing to every song on the radio, though mostly off-key, to dancing when no one else is, screaming when you can't keep it in any longer... all from me.

Then there are things that seem to have come naturally to you, the way you tell Wyatt to put his head on your lap and you stroke his hair or the way you sing to yourself while you color.  (People use to make fun of me because I would sing in my cube, to myself, as I checked stocks and orders on my open-to-buy.)  I didn't teach you this, it's innate.  It's you and it's me.

I joke, you aren't really a baby anymore, but there are times when you sit on my lap, your chest into mine, with your legs wrapped around my stomach, that you feel like my baby.  It's the way I've held you since you were born, heart-to-heart.

You have a true twinkle in your eye and I will ache when it's there no more, because it does disappear.  I see it... in your brothers, too busy with this or that.  Not enough sleep with the stuff they push their own little bodies to do.  And it makes them tired, their eyes less shiny, little red veins running through those eyes that use to be as white as yours are today.

You just started getting scared of loud things, like a large truck or our vacuum cleaner.  It makes me laugh, but it frustrated me too.  I just don't want you to ever feel limited about doing something because you are scared.  I want you to just try it.

Part of being a woman will be overcoming what you hear/feel that women can and can't do.  Believe me, you can do it!

And so I often make you 'do it'.  You've gone down huge, spinning water slides and up-a-mountain alpine slides.  You roll down grassy hills that go on forever and jump off the highest of beds.  You swing fifty feet in the air.  And you know what, once you tried it, you (almost always) scream "again" with that giant smile on your face.

I tell people all the time that I love this age.  It's the age where everything is magic, the world is this crazy place where bubbles float and water pours from the sky.

With this comes all that you have taught me, looking at the world in awe, feeling emotions; being brave but letting people know you are scared, having the sparkle in your eye for everyone and everything, for having fun in life.

Thank you for being my daughter.  I'm so, so lucky to be your mother.