Some things just kill me, melt me. The way you get excited about certain foods, the way you say the words: "WICE! (for some reason, the way your little voice plaintively says "rice" just knocks me dead). Noodles! (which refers to everything from lo mein to bow ties)" Sometimes I have to keep you out of the kitchen, because you just demand everything you see "I want a BUh-NA-naaa! I want a orange! I want DINNER!" You are busy, busy, busy, and you forget that you are hungry until you come inside and those two minutes before I can get dinner on your plate are eternal, because you suddenly realize you are RAVENOUS and that you need to eat everything in sight! Right now! And you are going to lose your shit if you don't get some goddamn blackberries RIGHT THIS SECOND! As soon as there is food in front of you, it's shoveled in, the favorite bits first, then the hand hovering carefully over everything else, touching the sweet potato, but moving in favor of the chicken sausage.
You've been eating like crazy the last few weeks, with gusto and vigor, perhaps making up for when you were sick with that stomach bug and then with a cold. The quantities of clementines, berries, pasta, sausage, bread, waffles - they just astound me. Or maybe it's because you are outside practically every waking hour, if the weather is decent. Now that it is spring, now that the light lasts, you are out the door like a shot as soon as I get home from work. It doesn't matter that you and Yvonne just came from the park a bare minute ago. "Outside! I want to go outside! Mama, come outside! Don't you want to come outside?" I can't get upstairs fast enough for you, to strip off my work clothes, and find some shorts and sneakers so I can chase you down the street.
When we must stay indoors, you are an expert with the iPad. You know how to do things on it that I don't. You can find your shows on Netflix and Sesame Street on YouTube, and your games. Sometimes you need help, and then you cry for it impatiently, desperately - "HELP! HELP!" and OMFG, we can't get over there FAST ENOUGH to fix the glitch or find the Dora episode with the Bouncing Ball. Even then, you aren't often still. You practice your gymnastics moves, hands on the coffee table where the iPad is, feet on the sofa, body in plank position over the gap. The few still times often come in the morning, when only the two of us are awake, and you ask me to sit next to you. I cup my coffee in one hand, wrap my other arm around you, and bury my nose in the linen-sun-lily fragrance of your wild curls.
Patience is not your strong suit. Damn it, you are just like me.
Dresses have become utterly out of the question. Back in March, I could put a dress on you, and you would wear it. Now, no matter how many days in advance I introduce the dress, talk about it, or how many times you say you want to wear it....no dice. I get it over your head, and you realize it hangs below your knees, that your free-range running and climbing might be impeded and "OFF! DON'T WANT IT!" I barely talked you into a flowy tunic the other day, and called it a victory.
You do like to accessorize, though. Hats, shoes, beads and sunglasses are all carefully selected and put on at your whim, even if it is a knit cloche on a 75-degree day. Hey, you have to suffer for fashion, baby. You adore your ladybug rainboots, even if I couldn't find them in a size quite small enough for your tiny feet. You pull them on, clomp around, fall out of them, try it again.
A girly-girl you are not, so far. You give as much attention to trains and fire engines as to your doll stroller and doll houses. You will wear play beads and carry around a rubber ball. You choose your airplane pajamas as often as the ones with butterflies. You seem to have an affinity for pirates and astronauts. Yet you want to be sure that lost baby animals on TV or crying children on the playground find their mamas. You endlessly collect sticks and rocks as we walk down the block, down the alley, through the park. They are handed off to me, hidden in a bush, dropped down manhole covers, and then briefly mourned until another is found. Small rocks have to find big rocks to be their mamas and papas, and then, all is well.
You don't miss a thing. If you say that you see an airplane or the moon or the cardinal that's been living in our neighbor's tree, I believe you, because you are always right, and it is another second or two before my eyes can catch up.
I see your bravery and daring and confidence grow and I think perhaps I should start making you wear a helmet all the time. At gymnastics, you jump off of the end of the big balance beam into the big foam pit - it's HIGH. And then you want to do it again, and again, and again. You shocked us the other day by clearing three big cement steps at an old school down the street, all in one springing downward broad jump. You nailed the landing. And did it again. You cause other parents at the playground to gasp and run to rescue you, because they don't know and can't believe how far you can jump, how high you can climb.
You still can't quite reach the pedals on your tricycle.
The changes during this third (!) year of your life are not so dramatic and rapid-fire as they were during the first year and a half. They are subtler, but grander. I look back at how you were one year ago, and really, you are much the same, but even more so. Bigger! Better! Faster! More! You are still active, goinggoingoing until we make you stop. You still want to climb and explore nonstop, and still narrate everything. It's just all ever so much more so - your legs are longer and stronger; you can jump so much higher and further; climb up all the slides on all the playgrounds; run so much faster; talk ever so much more with so many words and imaginings tumbling out of your mouth. I must keep better track of the astonishing things that you say, that make us shake our heads, and smile and laugh so hard. All of your opinions are strong; you are never lukewarm on anything.
Is it possible that I can love you more? Is it possible that my love for you has grown bigger just as you have grown bigger? You are still a little thing, by the growth charts. But I watch your legs drape and dangle when I hold you, and I marvel at the time that the whole of you was just barely longer than your thighbone is now. It is simply not possible that you were once that small.
Even as you tire me out with your perpetual motion, you win me with your enthusiasm, and I am both relieved and sad when I put you to bed and lose your energetic company at the end of the day. I crave you, like the most savory dish. I must inhale you, like the scent of rain. You console my early morning when you snuggle in my bed and sometimes doze off for a little while, in a rare moment of stillness. I tell you how beautiful you are, kiss you, a hundred times a day, if I can. You are the best gift of my every day.
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