You are 14 months old. I've been putting off writing your 12-month letter because I'm very busy with work and our new house, but also because it nearly hurts my heart to have to stop and think about you being a year older than that tiny bundle that arrived in my arms yesterday. Only it wasn't yesterday anymore.
The day you were born, my world stopped moving. And I couldn't grasp onto the world around me that kept on going. When that first April turned into May, I wanted to question my sanity.... how did three weeks go by without me knowing? I was so wrapped up in you that I lost a sense of time. And as every month passed, the feeling of a loss of something grew deeper and heavier. It's not a bad thing; it's just unexplainable and surreal. To see something be born into existence burns an eternal marker onto us; anything before that date is "normal", and everything after it is spent in awe of that first day, because one day you weren't there and then suddenly you were. Birth is something that I don't know if the human mind is capable of fully accepting.
Now, as I go back to work two days a week and enter 2007 billing dates into a computer, my mind constantly jumps back to those hours, days, and months of our first year and what we might have been doing together. July? Probably out for a walk with the stroller, to get the mail and hope you fell asleep. December? Bundling you up in your snowsuit and making mad dashes to shovel the path while you napped (for half an hour, of course). So many memories, my little love. My heart can't contain them. How will I keep hold of them AND add on all the new ones as time keeps racing past?
For your birthday we "gave" you a very special gift that i'm so sorry isn't coming anymore. We don't know why some things happen, but we want you to know and understand that God always takes care of us, and plans for us, and loves us no matter what. We also have a new sense of how unbelievably blessed we are to have you in our lives. You were so wanted, and you bring us ridiculous amounts of joy every single day. The light you bring into our home makes us want 25 of you (maybe... if you napped better). You are strong-willed and clever, so we know we have to be ten steps ahead of you at all times, but the depth and intensity of your personality makes you an undeniable presence that we cannot imagine living without. We are blatantly addicted to you. We feed off of your accomplishments and idiosyncrasies, trying to log each and every one of them into our emotional ledger, so that we can store them up and refer back to them later when we need to feel that precious heart-squeeze that only comes from seeing your firstborn grow up.
Love you forever,
Mommy
