Seventy two months, plus or minus

Dear Devil,

On this exact day six years ago, I was at our house in Houston, supremely grateful to be out of the hospital and to have my mother around, and more then a little gobsmacked at the job we'd taken on. I was counting your age in hour and days. Then, for the longest time, whenever anyone asked me how old you were, the unit of time was weeks. It eventually shifted to months, and now it's finally reached years.

You are six years old. The cliche is that time flies, and that's exactly how I feel, even though I remember events all along the course of those six years. Somehow it's gone by so quickly that I look at you and can't figure out where you came from or how we got here. We recently had to go to the US Embassy to renew your passport, and one of the things we had to bring was a photo montage to show how you've grown from a total standard looking baby to the gorgeous creature you are now. While I was putting it together, I realized that I could see the person you are now in those little baby and toddler photos, but I never would have extrapolated forward from those points to now.

This past year has been an incredible one for your brain - in the last few months something has clicked and all of a sudden you are voraciously reading everything you can get your hands on. You told me a few days ago that reading was your favorite thing ever, and I have to agree with you on that one babe - it is amazing. When you and Boo don't want to go to sleep right away, she climbs up on the top bunk with you and you read her stories by the light of a doll someone gave us years ago that has a necklace that lights up. Not the best thing for your eyes no doubt, but I have fond memories of doing the same under my covers with a flashlight for years, so you come by it honestly. And very often in the morning we'll find the two of you snuggled up together cosily, having fallen asleep together the night before.

You and the SRD are huge buddies, and you take your responsibilities as dog trainer very seriously. After an initial attempt to take both of you along to puppy class, your sister stayed home with me last week and you and Daddy had a much better time of it. You came home all excited to show me how to make him lie down, and you love taking him for walks on the Common. And I think all the attention from your friends and other people at school about the dog has made you much more confident - last week Daddy and I came to assembly to hear your class talk about their day at the Golden Hind and Tate Modern. You had to stand up and recite a line about the trip, and you did it with nary a hesitation or stutter - a far cry from last year's end-of-term school play. I'm not sure whether it was knowing the audience, practicing more, or just feeling more sure of yourself, but boy was I proud of you.

I love you sweet pea, even more then ever, and I can't wait to see what the next year brings for you.

Love,
Mumma

Woe is Boo

Crossposted at the other blog

Dear Boo,

Welcome to the life of the middle child. It's now almost 3 weeks after your birthday, and I'm finally getting around to your letter. Poor neglected thing...

It's been quite a year for you. You started off your fourth year by exhibiting a strong tendency towards incandescent and uncontrollable meltdowns, usually without warning. That phase persisted for a while, but things finally took a turn for the better. You've really blossomed over the past few months, and even more so since the wee dog arrived, interestingly enough. About a week after he came home, we had a conference with your teacher, who said "Getting a dog has been so wonderful for her!" We were kind of surprised - how much of a difference could a week make? But apparently my plot to irritate the crap out of all the other parents in the school* by bringing the puppy to pick up and drop off had resulted in a nursery full of kids who only want to talk about puppies. It seems that this trend has given you a whole burst of confidence - you're engaging the other kids, initiating games, joining in with the others. All good things, particularly for someone who has always been happiest playing by herself. It's good to see you branching out kiddo.

On our way to school on your birthday, I asked you if you being four was different from being three. You thought about it for a minute, and said seriously "Oh yes Mumma, I'm much older now." You sure are growing up sweetpea, and I can't imagine how you're going to be grown up enough to start school in the fall. You can't be that old, can you?

I love you Sunny Sunny. Welcome to the world of four.

Love,
Mama

* Wee dog comes to school several days a week, and I've had more then one parent indicate that this is making life difficult for them at home. Sorry! But only a little bit...

60 Months

Dear Devil,

Just over a week ago, you turned five years old. I know it's a cliche to rave about how fast time is going, but I swear to Gourds that only yesterday, you were this:

And in reality (something that I feel I have a tenuous grasp on at the best of times), you are this:

And this:

And this:

You have become oh so grown up and not shy about informing people that you are not a little baby anymore! We went on an expedition with some friends yesterday, and one little girl on the playground made the mistake of referring to the house that you and T were playing in as "the babies' house". You spent the next fifteen minutes following the poor girl around, informing her of the error of her characterization. "We are not babies!" In the end, you were great friends and played together happily until her mother ruined it by leaving, but it's an example of your insistence on fairness and things being right.

Since September, and your first suspicious trip to school, you have become a true convert. You are thrilled to go in the mornings, you proudly tell me when you get stickers on your sticker chart for helping out or cleaning up nicely, and you are usually pretty excited to come home and do your homework, such as it is. Your teacher says that it's as if you've been with your classmates forever, that's how well you've fitted in with everyone.

You are now genuinely reading, which I find more thrilling then I can explain. As someone for whom reading is an incredibly important thing, I'm so happy to see you starting out on the journey, and I can't wait to introduce you to some of the books that I loved as a child (and stayed up late with a flashlight under my covers to read after I was supposed to be asleep. I'm sure you'll do the same.) As a result of learning to read, you're also developing a British/Brahmin accent that would make your paternal great-grandfather extremely proud (not that he cared about that sort of thing, but you sound like him a bit) (although you are much more garrulous then he ever was!) Sometimes it takes me a few minutes to understand what you're trying to say because it's such a bizarre combination of American and English pronounciation. I suspect that this experience, of learning to read phonetically in the UK, will color your and your sister's speech for the rest of your lives. An interesting thought, that this experience may leave such an obvious mark upon you. I do hope it's for the best.

It's been a grand ride this far baby, and I am so looking forward to whatever comes next.

With all my love,

Mama (or, as you now insist, Mum)

36 months of Boo

Dear Boo Boo,

Well m'dear, here we are: yesterday you turned three years old. My overwhelming reaction to this milestone has been hunh? Followed closely by what the fuck? How did this happen?

It's been a big year for all of us, in so many ways. Our last few weeks in Houston were pretty hectic, but you dealt with things with your usual aplomb. As long as you had your a-ni-muls, you were happy. It's still true.

Upon first arriving in England, you were thrown off your game a bit - suddenly you'd gone from hanging with your buds all day to hanging with Mama. This resulted in a bit of an exaggeration in your tendency to separate the world into "Mama" and "not-Mama", otherwise known as "acceptable persons" and "unacceptable persons".

Thankfully, you've decided that other people are also acceptable, which had done a world of good for my sanity.

When you went back to nursery in September, it took you a while to get used to the idea again. Fair enough, but I'm happy to see that now that you've started going to the same school as your sister, most mornings you ask wistfully "Can I go back to Devil's school today?"

Unlike Devil, you are sticking to your Texas-accent guns with a vengeance. Some of your vocabulary has shifted (rubbish, toilet, trousers), but you still say "Mama, I ca-yaan't" with a lovely Southern drawl. The one word that has snuck through, however (your grand-paternal aunties will be thrilled to know), is to-mah-to. Which, given that up until a few months ago, those red things were te-ne-moes, is only fair.

You've become quite the amazing traveler over the past months, happily jaunting off to Scotland, France, Switzerland, the Peak District and North Africa. You've thankfully grown past the stage of not being able to sit still for longer then 25 minutes, which makes plane/train trips with you much more enjoyable.

Yesterday, we had a very low key party for you (poor second born!). T and M (our first friends in the UK) came over with their parents. You made animal masks and ran around the house screaming while we had tea and tried to carry on semi-normal, grown-up conversations. I fed the four of you sausages and to-mah-toes and carrots, and you happily blew out the candles on your (personally decorated) cupcakes. It was a lovely afternoon, and though you were a bit grey by bedtime, you were still your usual cuddly, snuggly self. And when we were putting you two to bed, you chattered blithely away through Daddy's and my's stories until suddenly you fell quiet. Sound asleep in mid-sentence. Well done kiddo.

Much love,

Mama

PS - Sorry about the blanket baby. One of these days I'll get it finished, I promise.

Four years

Devil -

At this exact moment 4 years ago, I was lying in my hospital bed thinking "You have got to be kidding me," while my OB/GYN called over yet another of the ten people at the foot of the bed saying "Come here, you have to feel this." Ah, the joys of giving birth in a teaching hospital. Twelve hours later I was sitting in a rocking chair in the middle of the night, trying to nurse you and getting distracted by the perfection that was your left foot. Who could have imagined that something so small and tiny and perfect had been lurking inside that big bump? Everything had changed in that short span of time, and even then I really had no idea how much the axis of my world had shifted.

This past year has been a challenging one, for so many reasons, but it has been so phenomenal at the same time. I looked in on you yesterday while you napped and laughed out loud - you had fallen asleep in mid-fidget, with your knees bent, and one leg propped over the other, just like you were leaning back waiting for the show to start. And I wondered where on earth you came from and what happened to that tiny baby?

In the past year you have just become such a fabulous, difficult, endearing, infuriating presence.

I think maybe part of the challenge for me is that we share some not-so-endearing traits that I have trouble dealing with in someone else. It's best if we don't speak to you in the mornings, and I am counting the days until you are old enough that CPS won't lock me up for feeding you coffee with your breakfast so that we can have a conversation without you snapping off someone's head.

Like me, if you are feeling a bit put out about anything whatsoever (aka Boo is looking at you and you want her to stop), you absolutely do not want to speak about it or interact with anyone - Greta Garbo has nothing on you kid.

But when you are in a good mood (or have gotten enough sleep!), you are one of the sweetest people I have ever known. You have a gift for defusing your sister's intractable tantrums, and will go out of your way to take care of her. You are fiercely protective of your family, and are not shy about drawing a line in the sand if you find it necessary.

You are a complete goofball, with a wicked sense of humor and an even wickeder smile.

And watching you run is watching pure joyful energy take flight.

Nothing has ever changed me so much as becoming your mother, sweetheart. Thank you.

Olive juice,
Mama