Happy Birthday

Dear Boy,

Three years ago you slid into the world and made me a mommy. You were the only tangible thing I always knew I couldn't live without. In some ways, I cannot remember existing without the slope of your nose, the shape of your ears, the sound of your voice. In other ways, it is impossible that you've been here as long as you have. It all seems like yesterday. All those late night feedings. All those dirty diapers. All the fun we've had. All the words you've said. There's no way any of it has happened because you're still brand new and staring at me with vernix all over your head. I'm still trying to wipe goo out of your eyebrow and contemplating how I can feel completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of what's just happened and completely underwhelmed by your presence all at once. Meeting you wasn't nearly as monumental as I thought it would be. Someway, somehow, it was as though we'd known each other forever. I'm still holding you on my chest and wondering how you are so small, how your head is so big, how you were inside of my body not even fifteen minutes ago, how my world will never, ever, be the same. You are three. One day turned into two. Two days turned into six months which turned into one year. One year turned into two and then, somehow, turned into three. The first picture I have of you was taken at seven and a half weeks gestation. You look like a bean. You were probably as big as your pinkie toe is now. It's impossible. I can't fathom a world where you are as small as your smallest toe, a world where my bean turns three.

In some ways I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds. It has been pure mostly joy watching you turn into a three-year-old and I look forward to seeing the person that you become as three turns to four. In other ways, I want to put a brick on your head and forbid you to grow. I want to banish even the notion of change. Scratch that idea--I want to reverse time and cuddle my newborn baby. I want to dance with six-month-old Garrett just one more time. I want to watch you learn to crawl and then walk all over again.

You are the most delightful, most challenging, most rewarding, most wonderful thing I've ever done. The work of parenting you is the best job I will ever have. Thank you for being miraculous, for shocking me on that day in early December with your existence, for meeting me on July 20, 2006 with a great deal of pushing and then a look of, "Oh hey, that wasn't so bad." I cannot imagine my world without you in it.

Happy 3rd birthday!