It's your birthday

Your sticky fingers rummage through my desk drawers in search of treasures. A pen, and hot pink sticky-tabs are clutched tightly, proving your competence at office management. In the near future we'll apply for your work permit so that you can help me with data entry and answering phones, tasks you have already mastered. You've removed a lid to a pen and are taking notes on a piece of paper you stole from my filing cabinet.

Last week you tried to unlock my office's front door so you could run outside on the concrete, seeking freedom on the black asphalt of my parking lot. Two days ago you tried to "assist" your father by plugging in his laptop charger.

Today, for your birthday, you got you a flu shot, because we love you and we do not want you to keep getting sick. Sorry it hurt, but today was the only day they had an opening. We also got you some awesome hippy toys and a book.

I'll end with this quote by Steve Almond:

I walk her from room to room and whisper my secret vows of love, and Baby yells and weeps and chokes on her tears. Her face appears frozen in a gummy frown. Her ears are tiny red seashells. There is a hot momentum to her misery; she is speaking in tongues, an ecstatic. It is her right as a citizen of earth, this aria of sorrow, this abject declaration. She puts everything she is, every ounce of her, into each shriek. Her breath is so sweet I want to climb inside her mouth. I kiss her cheek and she cries harder.

It's been an amazing, wonderful, challenging year. I love that you are mine and I am yours.


Xoxo,

Mama