jumpin' jumpin'

A week from today my girl will turn two. This week the enormity of her birthday really hit me. It started with Moana's bday on Tuesday. I always remember Casey being right ahead of me during pregnancy. We would run into one another at the Birth Center, me always surprised that her little one had still not come. Moana was late and Eliana was early. Somehow they ended up just a week apart and BFF to boot. On Tuesday, the morning of Moana's second, I happened upon the cd that my sister made me when Eliana was born. I nursed her to sleep to it every night for the first six or so months. It's full of emotional, dramatic songs that I haven't heard in quite some time. It got me in the gut. I got all weepy and tried to rock and hold Eliana who just said, "Wild, Wild Moanie?, "Happy and You Know It?" wondering why in the world we were listening to something that would make me cry.

Those days feel so far away. I'm so thankful for writing it all down or I would barely believe it even happened. She is such a big girl now. Her latest thing that she does that she (and I) find just hysterical is she climbs into her old exersaucer that lives, dusty, in our basement. She crawls in and says, "Elie a baby!" and laughs and asks to be read to. She then squeezes herself out of it, steps over the side, and repeats the whole routine.


She's a little nut. She loves to laugh and sing and be silly. She loves "popsicle parties" in the yard and will shout a, "Cheers, Mama!" to me as we click our popsicles together.


She climbs up all the big equipment at the park on her own and fearlessly races down slides, screaming with delight in the dark tunnels while her mama anxiously awaits her arrival at the bottom.


She takes her clothes off by the creek and tries to, "Swim like a dolphin." She's so full of radiance and life. So full of all the good things.

I am honored to be her mama, to be able to celebrate her triumphant, graceful first two years.