2? Not yet! But getting there? Hayden, you turned 21 months a few days ago and I have noticed that I am way less emotional this year than last year. As a parent I can say with all honesty that I thought you'd never get to be 2. Not that I thought you wouldn't make it there. It's just that when entering my journey into motherhood, I wanted a baby. I wanted the cheeks with the love able fat, small clothes, holding an infant, rooms filled with the crystal pearls that is infant laughter - Not a toddler. Yeah, I knew you would grow up and over into one, that didn't mean I have to like it. Every time I thought of my baby growing into a noisy, busy terrible 2 tot, I cringed. I quickly Men in Black flashed it from my memory and envisioned babies, babies, babies. I wanted you to grow so we could do certain things still I never excepted such a change and that with every change and difference, you were shedding every bit of infancy.
Once you hit 1, I thought of you magically knowing everything and when that didn't happen instantly I settled back into "Oh, wait, at 1 you're still a baby? Score! You're just a big baby." Two months rushed by and I looked up and you were different: in looks, in proportion, in ability, and thought "and it begins."
You kicked into high ninja like action with lovely tantrums that sometimes made me pray David would get home, so that I could get a break. There was the lovely stage of whining for everything reason or no reason. I can't mark the day when your legs grew so long nor the day that your torso didn't grew from a tiny baby to hold torso into the long one you have now. I do recall the day I looked at you and saw "Wow, you look way different today. How did this happen." It was the weirdest thing, I thought you were like a changeling or something: same child, looks pretty much the same but you know the difference can sense the difference. With every passing month, at every end almost the beginning of a new one, you'd always change, or do something new. It could be as small as the way you looked at me, letting me know that you were thinking and calculating something. Or putting blocks in places you did before.
I never read stuff on toddlers the way I did infancy. I just didn't think much about toddlers. So in a way it has been a pleasant surprise that I love this age and even though I had lots of fun w/ "baby Hayden" You have no idea how much more fun you are now.
Sure I can't things away from you acting as if they have disappeared, you have long since overcome that, because you will follow to see where I put it and go get it again. In everything I have to be more crafty. I have learned the hard way that taking things and putting them high is a bad decision. You will money climb anything with no fear, wait strategically until my back is turned to retrieve it.
You raid my fridge at any given times. Grunting and gesturing that you want this and that. And after the millionth time of telling you "no, you can have this or that or - Okay, you can. Get in your chair," I ask myself how come the hospital never gave me a manual. Or when you tell me to "Shut up" with the gusto and 'tude of a child 5x your age, even though I never say the word. Or how you pick up words that I don't teach, or some you don't hear regularly, or comprehend things you shouldn't. (Well, that I think you shouldn't).
Then are the days, I trip over a toy, raving mad with embarrassment and frustration,and you come "You hurt? You hurt? I sorry, I sorry." As you rub my head. "Hug?" You hug me, "ahhh" (something I always say and now he says its really cute) and you offer a kiss, another rub before you grab my hand to show me something that you want to do. Be still my heart.
Even though I sometimes don't need you in my hair, pulling on me, asking me to come play with this or that and I'm really trying to get something done. I flash to the days that will come when I'm no longer a buddy, but "ew, Mom." And my time spent with you has dried up and you're off with Sally or Sue while hanging out with you buddies.
2 years are about to come, and I just think wow, 2 years, then 2 more, oh my 4 then 2 more you're in school already? Then 2 more, and wow you're my real big boy. My first, my eldest, the one I experienced everything with for the very first time. The first baby I carried for 9 months of anticipation, small kicks, and obsessive planning, the first baby that was mine to be held underneath a myriad of kisses and soft lips grazing your hair as I rocked you to sleep, eased the battle wounds of toddlerhood, or simply just while cuddling. The first baby I held on my chest awake way pass midnight just getting you to sleep because you refuse to close your eyes and lose sight of me even for your own good, to sleep next to me on my bed (Be still my heart, are these tears?) to awake next to, to go to sleep next to, to breath the same breath on gray and black dotted sheets night day, night day. For me to open my eyes to your soft breathing next to me, clutching me just a little too tightly, still loose in your valley of dreams but needing to know even in that valley that I am near.
You are my son, my love, my cliche. The tiny person that runs up and down my house babbling ferociously on his fake telephone, reminding of a business man whose stock has just plummeted. You are well versed, forever learning, forever getting into trouble, growing beyond any limits I have set, and faster than my brain can sometimes catch are process. You are Hayden. And I do love you.
And PICTURES!!
This one is not edited but the others are, the last is new, but the two in the middle are dos from the photos I posted earlier in the week. See how much I've learned?
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