A letter

A letter to my 13 month old daughter.
April 28, 2015 Dear Cecily, I want to write you a letter to tell you how much I love you and try somehow to capture these fleeting days and weeks before they are gone like sand running through my fingers. Now that you are over a year old and the dates and holidays we are living through are not your firsts anymore, I find my mind drawn back with some frequency to what life was like a year ago. It is hard for me to realize that memories of even those times are already fading.

Patriot's Day 2015.

Hi Paul Revere.

You have become a curious little person and like exploring things and places that are unfamiliar to you. You seem intent on mastering certain tasks, like putting the plastic coins into the slot. You don’t have many intelligible words yet, but it seems like every day we hear a new combination of sounds from you. You are social and like interacting with other people, often even strangers. You have started giving precious hugs, which melt my and your dad’s hearts. There is nothing sweeter than a hug from you. Leaving you with the babysitter often means that I endure frantic inconsolable crying on my way out, but I am always assured that you calm down quickly and are perfectly content for the rest of the time. You are a toddler now, preferring to walk instead of crawl. You are not completely steady yet but every day I see improvement. You are a good eater, but have started shaking your head to certain things and refusing even to try them. You take either two naps or one depending on the day.

Spring has finally arrived after one of the longest, and definitely the snowiest, winter of my life. Today we met Bex and Saul at Whole Foods for dinner and afterwards you and I walked some in the park by the river across the street from Whole Foods. You really wanted to pet the Canada Geese, and you liked picking up brown leaves and trying to steal my sunglasses. You totally messed up my hair when I put you on my shoulders to go back to the car. You pointed at the birds in the sky and I finally showed you the real moon, instead of all the pictures of the moon in the books we read. I love spending time with you and watching you learn things about the world around you. I love being your mother. Every day is an adventure with you. You have even started helping with small chores such as “go get your shoes” and “put these stamps back in the box.”

We visited Buckman's Tavern last weekend. This is where the Lexington Militia waited from about midnight until 4:30 am when the British Regulars showed up on their march to Concord. It is directly across from the Lexington Green where the fighting took place.

The painting on the wall is of the fighting that day.

I was thinking on the drive home today how every single human, those people playing softball over there, the drivers in the other cars, were also once tiny babies like you were a year ago. They all grew up and so will you. Someday I will look back and wish I could spend a few minutes with my one year old again, or hold my precious baby in my arms. That is not the way life works, though. We take the good with the bad every day on earth that we get and hopefully we are present, truly present when the good moments happen. That is the stuff life is made of.

I love you my sweet Cecily. ***

By the way, I owe you an ice cream cone, Candy!