Happy birthday, littlest cub!

I think I should rename this blog the Birthday Book. I seem only to make it over here when my kids have a birthday and I'm weepy.

And here I am again.

My tiniest bear cub will be one year old tomorrow. I don't even have her birth story on this blog! (Heck, I don't have her older brother's birth story on this blog.)

We had an early birthday party for her at church today, and it hit me last night that she really, truly is growing up. I didn't tell her she could. She doesn't seem to care.

I sneaked into her room last night and watched her sleeping. She was so peaceful. Not a single cry or fuss. And I didn't wait for one. I picked her up and took her into my bed just to snuggle with her. Because by tomorrow she won't technically be an infant anymore. I'm running out of chances to smell baby breath and breathe in baby hair and listen to the shnuffly little snores.






When I put the biggest bear cub down for her nap one afternoon this week, it was a glorious September day, with the sun streaming in the windows of the bedroom and making our blue walls seem like the sky itself, lit up with golden light. And I was immediately taken back to the day I came home from the hospital with this littlest cub, and I took her into the bed and had a nap with her on my chest, breathing gently and making me feel more content than I have in years. Maybe that's because she's just a very chill baby. Maybe it's because I finally felt as if I "had" this newborn thing.

This birthday is a particularly hard one for me. This is the baby who would splay out across my chest as a newborn and simply soak up mommy time. I'm pretty sure she took a nap in her crib just about never, because I couldn't bear to put her down. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she didn't quit crying when I picked her up. She loved to snuggle; she loved to be worn in a carrier; she loved to be in her sleeper. She wasn't particular.

This is the baby who grins up at you and you're immediately completely frozen, admiring her laughing eyes and her dimpled grin. She loves to laugh. She loves to babble.

This is the baby who hears her daddy come home from work and speed-crawls down the hallway to sit at his feet and tug his pant leg until he picks her up. When he does, she rubs his goatee, lays her head down on his shoulder, and begins patting his back. And she doesn't move from there. She just wants to cuddle.

I am watching this little one emerge from infancy into toddlerhood and I am wondering what she will be like. For a long while I thought she would be soft-spoken and gentle. I actively worried about whether she would ever get any airtime in this house. Then she learned to eat solids and to demand them loudly from her high chair. Shortly after that and her subsequent crowning as Queen of the Nazgul, I stopped worrying.

Then I wondered if she would always be so patient and even-tempered. Cue the frenzied shrieking upon being deposited in her car seat, and her attempts to grab my arm and bite me as I fastened the buckles. Sic transit endless patience.

Would she always be so sweet to her siblings? And to other children? Well, she's smacked her brother in the face every day this week. Multiple times. And she's begun taking out other small children too. So she may have a touch of thug in her.

But at the same time, she can coo so gently you wish she'd never stop. And the hugs . . . oh, the hugs.

Happy birthday, Baby Girl. You are a joy and a treasure to your daddy and me, and to your big sister and big brother. You are the smiliest, sweetest, silliest, most loving little monkey and we are blessed that you are ours. Please don't grow up too fast.