Ack, stop the clocks! It's going too fast! Was it really a year ago that we were in Australia with a just-five month old? Was it really a year ago that she was just rolling over?
Today, she is summiting the ottoman and the armchairs, running, running, running, and adding words all the time. We have helicopter, bicycle, truck, bus, motorcycle, airplane (the girl likes her transportation, OK?), shirt, belt, socks, shoes, pants, trees, shut, door, gate, sit, highchair, bird, yellow, and probably more, because those are only the ones we understand out of the complicated chains of beautiful babble that come out of her mouth, in the tiniest little silverbell voice. She says "no" so absolutely and convincingly and cutely, with a little shake of her strawberry blond head, a pursing of her red cupid-bow lips, that you know you will do as she says.
It's hard to be seventeen months, sometimes. It's not fair to get a cold and be teething at the same time. Not fair to anyone (well, especially me, whine, whine). But even after the fragmented sleep, the teething tablets, the Motrin, the vaporizer, the soothing, she still bounces awake in the morning, ready to go, a Kewpie doll windup toy in footie pajamas.
No matter how tired and puffy-eyed, and rough-voiced I am, and no matter how many times I wanted to sell her to the Chinese (or at least her grandparents) in the middle of the dark unsettled night, I am still utterly charmed by her in the morning. A smile and patience come out of me from somewhere, some maternal depth that I'm definitely not conscious of. Her coldwater blue eyes open wide, and she smiles and points at the clock (reading 6:31 a.m.) and proudly declares "CLOCK!" and I cuddle her and say, yes, sweetheart, that's the clock! In this calm, proud voice that musters from somewhere, even though I would kill (or at least bribe) for more sleep.
I watch her become every day. Become ever more herself. And I also watch me becoming someone else too, someone calmer, more patient, more tolerant than I ever knew I could be, molded, shaped, by her, on this journey.
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