Double, Double Your Enjoyment

Between my blogging history, Twitter, and context clues, you probably already know, but today is Caelyn’s 2nd birthday. We’re having a party this Saturday with the immediate and extended fam, but it was on this date two years ago in an operating room that a doctor peeked over the sheet at an incredibly swollen me and said, “Okay, it’s gonna feel like there’s an elephant on your chest. Ready?” and then drew his elbow way back past his ear and shoved Caelyn’s head out of my ribcage.

Caelyn doesn’t know today’s her birthday. I burst into her room this morning with a huge smile and a, “HEY! IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!” She just smiled, pointed at her posterior, and said, “Biper?”

But, still, I couldn’t let the day go uncelebrated, could I?

Birthday Stop No. 2

Yesterday, Chris let me sleep in and got up with Caelyn at 6:45. I’m not sure if he did it for her birthday, but he took her out for doughnuts and Lowe’s. (Caelyn LOVES Lowe’s. All those cabinets & drawers!) I figured that meant we girls could celebrate today without Daddy feeling left out. We started with dress-up, bubbles, and adorning our limbs with sparkly stickers. She enjoyed these, but most days, she’s got one thing on her mind: GO!

I didn’t want to be gone all day, though, so that cancelled out zoos, museums, trains, etc. outside of Plano or Frisco. I googled “stuff to do with kids in Plano” and came up with a list that included bowling, laser tag, and trails and then went on to list the Opera, the Symphony, the Theater, and services at fancy churches. I know Andrea Bocelli was on Sesame Street singing operatic bedtime songs to Elmo, but, please.

Left to my own genius, I decided to take her to lunch at Wendy’s, then swing by the park, and wind down at Barnes & Noble, Jr:

As always, Wendy’s was well received.

She had fun at the park, but it was too hot to play on much of the equipment sans shade, and she got all greasy with sunscreen. Plus, I have a hard time relaxing at the park because I’m constantly looking for potential kidnappers and wasps.

She loves being free at Barnes & Noble. We read a lot, sat in chairs, wheeled fire truck books on the floor, played with puppets. I told her she could pick one thing (since she won’t get presents till Saturday). In her pink ruffly dress, pink jellies, and pink purse (all of which she picked out of her closet), she selected a brown, stuffed Triceratops.

Of course, she thinks it’s a frog, but close enough.

We finished with a shared lemon bar in the shade outside Starbucks and came home to a Gilmore-accompanied nap. (She chose “La La.”)

I think it’s been a nice birthday. It’s hard to know with a two-year-old. I figure we’ll spend the afternoon coloring, eating yogurt, and playing. We’ll have dinner and a big bath and then it’ll all be over.

I’ll no longer have a baby.

It’s hard for most moms not to reminisce wistfully about their first night with their firstborn. It’s hard for me too. It’s cliche to say it seems like it wasn’t that long ago, but it’s true. It’s even more cliche to say that the time’s going too fast, that I worry that I’m not taking advantage of each moment and I’ll regret it when she’s in Kindergarten or locked in her bedroom being 15 and mysterious.

But it’s true.

Of course, it doesn’t always seem fast. I’d be lying if I said that every day just whizzes by and I never feel like I’ve aged 10 years by sheer exhaustion. I’d be lying if I told you that I never lose my patience by dinnertime and feel like anybody would have to be crazy to argue with me about anything. And I’d definitely be lying if I claimed to have never cried and thought, “It’s one thing to do something for someone else and have it go unappreciated. It’s an entirely different thing to have the majority of what you do be for someone else, have it unappreciated, and then watch them have a fit because it’s not what they had in mind.”

But I still love it. (How could I not, when in the middle of Pilates, she comes up behind me on my mat, takes my face in her hands, and plants the slightest kiss on my nose?)

I’m not going to get all sentimental on you, though, or try to instill parental wisdom. But I will say that while Caelyn has changed and grown over the last two years, I’ve done the same, even if not in equal measure. I don’t know how it is for everyone else, but I know that I’ve learned a lot about myself since I became a parent — who I am and who I want to be, what my limits are, how far I can go, how deeply I can feel. (I’ve been surprised, too, by how quickly my patience can whither, how easily I can deliver a cutting line.)

Parenting, more than anything in the past, has made me feel both on uncertain and solid ground, sure of myself and filled with doubt. It’s exciting to me, though, to know that, somehow, I can literally feel the process within me. I can feel myself growing, moving every day into a more certain, more fitted space. One that’s been held by thousands before, but is still uniquely mine. And uniquely ours as a family.

Maybe it’s unfounded and premature, but it feels like we’re steadily moving toward those middle-aged years where we’re not afraid to send our daughter off on her own. It’s even more exciting to me to think that Caelyn is only two years into the same process — in a human, spiritual sense, not necessarily in the “follow in my footsteps” sense. And I get to be a part of it. That fills me with pride and humility all at once.

But, even so, it’s true what they say. Two is bittersweet.