Straddling Two (Worlds)

My baby, the little girl born in our school room, turns two tomorrow.  For those of you that don't know her, she is a walking contradiction in every way, which began from the moment I found out I was pregnant.

I was convinced she was a boy.  At my twenty week ultrasound, when the technician told me she was a girl, I asked him to please check again.

These pictures were taking at my 40 week ultrasound to make sure everything was okay. 

Hello CHEEKS!

This picture hurts.

   

But this one makes it all better.

Then I was convinced she was going to be born early, maybe even before Christmas, and had false labor on and off for weeks.  She arrived a week late, narrowly missing being born at home in that snowmaggedon we had two years ago.

Thank you for not being born in this!

Happy birth day Baby A!                

Within two minutes she can claim, "I can DO it!" about some task, such as screwing the lid on her cup, and then turn around and answer, "I can't DO it!" when you've asked her to pick up her toys.

She is a high need, high strung "mommy's girl" to the point of driving me crazy many days, and yet knows exactly how to turn on her charm and keep the family in stitches with her antics.

Half the time she hangs out on my hip with a frown that looks like a cross between a curmudgeonly old man and Strega Nona, but she has a smile that could light the world on fire.























She will pee AND poo on the potty, but only if I leave her completely naked from the bottom down.  The minute a diaper goes on, all potty training goes out the window.  Unless we're at mass.  Of course.

She will spend thirty minutes sobbing in the car on the way home from three hours of errands, asking for an "Elmo show" between sobs.  Yet when we get home, she crawls in my lap, asks for "side" (her word for nursing) and suddenly life is all better.

She is my big girl.  She is my baby.  She is straddling two worlds, and as ready as I thought I was to have her grow up, there is such a large part of me that is still clinging to her babyhood.

Meara enjoying first moments with her sister.

Ailin is that third child that I fought tooth and nail for, insisting that "something was missing" from our family.  Ken and I fought and talked, and then fought and talked some more about what another baby would mean for us.  Did we want to go back to diapers, sleepless nights, the loss of "freedom," the loss of our own bed, the demands of the nursing relationship?  Really, Christine, do you want that?  Yes, I would say, yes.  Something is just missing.

About eleven months later,  I was recovering in bed after the birth, full of those wonderful mommy hormones, gazing down at Ailin.  Ken sat down beside me, looked down at her and said, "You were right, something was missing."

So, to my baby, my big girl, the piece that completed this family puzzle---happy almost second birthday.  Our lives are so much better because we said yes to you.