A Letter to My Daughter

As your third birthday approaches (sob), I find myself wanting to capture you as you are right this minute in as many ways as I can. I'm gathering little video clips that I hope will amuse you one day, and you are more than happy to pose for pictures so I have plenty of those too.

Pacey may have technically broken me in as a mother but, my dear, you challenge me daily to find my inner peace and appreciate your spirit for the bright spark it is. You are so very passionate, which is both a blessing and a curse. You love me fiercely and I absolutely soak it up, for one day I feel confident that you will believe you hate me. Your auntie and I are going to place bets on how old you are when you first shout those words at me.

We had a really hard day this week. You want so badly to be in charge of yourself and, for the most part, we have found compromises that allow you to feel independent and still get us to where we need to be at the right times. But sometimes you dig your heels in so deeply and it triggers my own fairly epic stubbornness and there is yelling. Lots and lots of yelling. We're really working on potty training you right now and I am still struggling to find a way to make it work with your strong will. It's really easy to plan these theoretical strategies but the reality is, if you don't want to sit on the potty? You won't.

Your language has absolutely exploded and every day you say something that amazes me. You love to narrate what you're doing and are experimenting with saying what I think you think are shocking things to see what my reaction might be. You can be extremely dramatic and I confess that I am becoming hardened to it; two weeks after you got a VERY minor scrape on your knee you still like to fake cry about your owie and tell me you need a "rubber band" (what you call bandaids) to make it feel all better. I have to work not to roll my eyes sometimes. :) You make a nice complement to your brother, who is more of the strong, silent type and are starting to sense when he could use your help communicating. You stopped calling me Mama a few months ago and it's almost exclusively Mommy now, except when you call me "My Best Girl" (which is what I call you...I sometimes hope I never have another daughter so that I can call you that forever).

Although you love princesses and fairies with your whole heart, you're pretty open to almost any activity. Your imagination is taking off and it's so fun to listen to the various characters you pretend to be on a daily basis. I have to try to capture your pretend phone conversations because they are hilarious and tend to illustrate for me just how carefully you are watching and listening to me.

I finally figured out the other day that this funny little expression you make sometimes is your attempt to mirror my "are you sh1tting me with this nonsense?!?" look. All I can say is that if it is at all similar to my version, it's no wonder that it has little to no effect on you and your brother when you're giving me a hard time.

You've been in school now for about six months and you have screamed and cried and clung to me at drop-off time nearly every single school day since the beginning. Until this week, suddenly you trotted off to find your beloved Teacher Emily and waved me off without a peep. I felt a rush of relief and then, I confess, a teeny bit of sadness. Although it always made me feel guilty to peel you off of me and hand you howling to your teachers, it made me feel good that despite my flaws, at that moment being with me trumped the promise of any number of gloriously messy activities.

You make my heart sing and you make my heart howl with frustration. I wouldn't trade you for the world, my best girl.