“He’ll be two in January,” I reply.

“His verbal skills are incredible. He blows the other kids out of the water.”

“Oh, thanks,” I say, and scuff the floor with my shoe. I love hearing this kind of remark, obviously, but there’s something sort of awkward about it, too. I don’t want to be that parent who puffs up and yammers on about how incredibly bright I think my child is because, really, who hasn’t heard all THAT before? And I don’t want to minimize, either, as though he’s not worthy of praise. Often, I find myself awkwardly downplaying — “oh, yeah, heh, well, we’re very lucky!”

Today I wonder what it was about Drew’s speech that so impressed this teacher. Was it the fact that he, for some unknown reason, proudly told her six times in repeated succession that ‘Dada make chee-bubbas (cheeseburgers) on deck’? Or was it when he loudly started exclaiming, “SESSY KNOW IT!” at the top of his lungs, an approximation of the chorus from LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” that has become–rather embarrassingly, to me–very clear to even the untrained toddler translator.

“Well!” the teacher had said in her ever-chirpy tone, “I think that’ll be the phrase of the day!” Nearly eight hours spent with toddlers today, and Drew’s refrain had topped her list of ‘kids-say-the-darndest’ phrases. I…I was proud?

Not only had Drew loudly exclaimed that he was sexy and he knew it, he had followed each proclamation with a mischievous grin and a certain twinkling around the eyes. I had sheepishly looked around the room for parental judgey face, fearing the other mothers had quickly concluded that I should be banished from parenthood for letting my child listen (and clearly, listen often) to such music.

Fifteen minutes later, Drew decides to narrate his bowel happenings for me as we drive through darkened streets on our way home. “Mama, I do pee pee,” he says.

“Oh? Oh yeah?” I respond, unsure what to do. He’s in a Pull-Up, and won’t use a potty that’s not positioned precisely in the middle of our living room floor where he can get a good view of a PBS Kids show. There’s no point in encouraging him to hold it until we get home; he doesn’t yet seem to have that ability.

“Yeah!” he says. “I have a poop.”

“You have to poop?” I ask.

“I make poop.  I make big poop.” My head begins a slow fall to the dashboard. “I! I have gas!” he goes on. “I have big gas.”

“You have A LOT of gas?” I correct (teachable moments, they’re everywhere).

“Yes,” he responds emphatically. “Yes.”

So many words, and yet, I’m speechless.

“STOP IT!” I wail. “Just stop it!” in a pathetic, ugly voice I’ve never used with anyone else. Not in ‘its-not-fair’ arguments as a teen. Not in unrequited-love-angst moments as a young adult. Not in just-moved-in-together-eye opener moments as a newlywed.

Some days it’s a wave of emotions that, if depicted on paper, would look like a seismograph. Such tear-inducing, joyful, bottle this up and make it stay this way forever moments. Such piteous, I can’t deal anymore flashes of panic. Sometimes it’s these swings alone I can’t take. They’re so sudden and sometimes so frequent that their head-spinning fury is nausea-inducing.

Today was a good–no, a great day. Yesterday was too. Today was hugs and high fives and raucous, throat-baring laughter. Who knows what tomorrow will be, what parts of me this love will unearth?

What all this activity says about me I’m not sure. I have a secret love for small business? Oh, a closet patriot! That I’m a glutton for punishment? Surely, yes. Ambitious? Frugal? One of those types who yearns to make a buck any way any how? I have been known to haul bags full of our empty, sticky soda and beer cans to the local supermarket so I can redeem my measly .05 cents per can. Surely the lot of these endeavors says a lot about me. Precisely what, I’m still mulling over.

I used to wonder what I would do post-child, and I guess there’s no way to be certain until you’re in the situation. When Drew was just a few months old, a new friend I’d made asked what my plans were, work-wise.

“Well,” I told her, “I’m staying home with him.”

“But do you think you’ll ever go back to work?” she pressed.

“I don’t know,” I said, “Right now, I’m content. I’ll see what happens. I can’t imagine doing anything other than taking care of him.” And oh, how that was true.

They say that for the first several months of life, a baby doesn’t understand that he or she is separate from its mother. I believe the same is true in reverse—that a mother has a hard time believing that the baby is separate from her. Logically, we understand that this little person exists outside of our body, but his needs are so great, and so frequent, that all the world around is a blur. There is you, and there is this tiny person, this tiny version of you who needs to eat, to be burped, to be changed, to be swaddled, to be rocked, to be held, to be soothed, and on and on until the cycle repeats again. Your life is lived in hours. What else is there?

And now. And now my son knows that he is separate from me. Now he runs away, and looks back at me with a little glimmer in his eye. Look at me, mom! You’re there and I’m here! Watch me go!

I’m watching him go, a little more each day. There’s a glimmer and a tear in my eye. He’s figuring out where he wants to go, who he’s becoming, and so am I. I don’t know how many different jobs I’ll pick up or leave behind in the coming years. Happily, I’ve found there’s a lot of ‘else’ out there. For now, though, the one that pays the least is my favorite.

The bag did show up later that afternoon, and was set to be delivered to us that night. Only it was delivered to the wrong building, and so the following morning, Mike could be seen dragging a very large red suitcase around the hot and windy main road of our very large resort complex. The resort shuttle, much like the bag the day before, never showed up.

While Mike was schlepping and sweating with our belongings, I was inside our villa taking long, close, concerned looks at Drew’s face. He had awoken that morning with a rash on his face. At first I thought maybe there had been mosquitos in his room, or perhaps a couple bugs had decided to nestle in with him in his crib—the rash was more pronounced on one side of his face. And there were other spots too—his knees were developing a slight rash, and wait, a diaper change revealed a lacy rash invading his backside. Come to think of it, the previous day he had seemed to have a fever while we were on the plane. His body had been hot right down to the soles of his feet.

Later that day the three of us piled into a taxi and drove 40 minutes to a local doctor. I held Drew on my lap and he fell asleep nestled into my lap. I looked down at his face, red from a continued fever and a rash that seemed to be spreading by the minute, and cried. What was going on with him? Who was this doctor? Where was my mud slide?

We ended up at a clinic that was part of a medical office building situated along a busy highway. Our taxi driver (who, it should be noted, went ABOVE and BEYOND for the duration of that day) waited inside the clinic for us while Mike and I paced the tiled atrium outside with Drew. The wait may have only been 30 minutes, but with a baby who was alternately crying in our arms and curiously stomping up and down the place, running head-first for the stairs, it was interminable.

The doctor told us he had never seen a rash like the one Drew presented with. Need I say these are not the words you want to hear from a doctor? He ordered us to a lab within the building for bloodwork. If we thought Drew’s crying was bad before, it was a joyous laugh compared to what came out of him when I was charged with pinning him down while a lab technician pricked his finger and methodically squeezed 20 purple drops of his blood into a small vial. We three emerged from the lab shaking, and returned to waiting and pacing.

The bloodwork came back normal. After a check of Drew’s ears and throat, the doctor declared a case of strep and prescribed a course of antibiotics, Benadryl and pain relievers. The rest of the day was spent consoling a very cranky toddler and trying to hide our looks of horror at the blisters that were steadily forming across his face, hands, feet and knees. I had heard of strep, and even scarlet fever, but this? This didn’t add up.

Thanks to the wonders of Dr. Google and BabyCenter ( I KNOW.), we re-diagnosed our son with a case of Coxsackie virus, also known as hand-foot-mouth disease (but NOT hoof-mouth disease, LET’S BE CLEAR). It’s a nasty, vile illness, and we soon learned to what degree. Out of six people on our little vacation from hell (four adults, two babies), five people got coxsackied. And so, as each day dawned a brilliant sunrise over the Caribbean, another member of our fated group came down with a fever, then sore throat, then blisters.

On our last day, Mother’s Day, Mike came down to the pool where I was resting–for the first time in the entirety of our trip–and said, “If you think Drew’s face is bad, you should see Charlie’s.” Oh no, I thought, were both babies now blister-faced? As it turned out, no. Charlie, 8-month daredevil that he is, had taken a headfirst dive out of his stroller and onto a concrete floor. He now had Coxsackie AND a nasty road rash.

That afternoon, us four adults did the only thing we could think of. We poured a bottle of rum into a pitcher of Bahama Mama mix and had at it. This may have been the vacation we would never forget, but we sure as hell were going to try.

I know we live in an era of thumbing our noses at gender roles but it’s so fascinating to me to watch this boy become such a BOY. And yes, I mean boy in all the typical gender stereotype ways. He his happiest digging around in dirt, watching his pink palms turn brown, holding them up, turning them over and over and then, eventually, smearing the whole mess in his little mouth. A shuddering city bus, roaring garbage truck or descending airplane overhead are siren songs to him. All activities must pause for a brief moment of acknowledgement. ‘OOOOOHHHHHHHH!’ he says, mouth curved into an awed oval, one fat, tiny index finger pointing towards the sound. ‘Yes,’ I answer, ‘a truck!’ He giggles and kicks his legs, so pleased with a world that is full of loud, large machines.

Every item is an object just waiting to be thrown. Balls, remotes, phones, blocks, cups, it’s all fair game. The other day he picked up a toy and looked pointedly at our flat screen TV, pausing for the windup. I imagined telling Mike that his beloved 50” TV had a gaping hole in it and visions of divorce papers danced in my head.

Dogs delight him. “Arf!” he says each time one crosses his path. ‘Arf! Arf!’ Sometimes, after the dogs have wandered away, he gazes at the horizon as if lost in thought, tiny ‘arf’ sounds fading into a hush.

The bathtub has become my own personal water hazard. He scoops the water into a little orange cup and flings it. The cup is lifted overhead with both arms before a dramatic pause and then, SPLASH! I’ve tried everything to minimize the fallout: I lessened the amount of water in the tub; I’ve closed the shower doors so that barely my head can peek through. And still, I come out soaked. I’ve pinned my hair back, taken my sweaters off, and now, my shirt. Today, I gave him a bath wearing only a bra and jeans.

He wants to be held. He wants to be put down. He looks up at me with both hands reaching – pick me up, mommy. I heave him onto my hip and immediately he’s writhing in my arms, diving headfirst towards the floor. Up, down, up down, all the livelong day.

He’s growing more exhausting by the day. Sometimes it feels like living an action movie in fast-forward. Everything is wrangling, corralling, and redirecting. When the toys are put away, the bath is done, the dirt wiped clean, he settles into my lap and leans his head back against my shoulder. We read a book about planes and I ‘whoosh’ the sound effect into his clean, damp hair. “Whoosh,” he repeats, nearly a whisper now. These days are exhausting. And so, so worth it.

Saturday, 9:06 PM: Drew begins to stir in his crib. He starts coughing and rocking back and forth on his knees. The cough escalates and as it does, he moves from rocking to sitting to standing. I head to his room and by the time I get there he’s hacking and his breath is making a wheezy sound. I call my neighbor, a mother of four kids under 6, and tell her that Drew sounds wheezy. “Want me to come listen to him?” she asks without a moment’s hesitation. “Could you?” I respond. She’s at my door in the time it takes for me to walk downstairs with Drew.

The two of us agree that it sounds like Drew has croup, and that it’d be a good idea to take him to the local pediatric urgent care. Mike swings into action gathering our gear and making sure we have everything we need. He is straightforward and matter-of-fact, which I appreciate all the more because I know inside he’s freaking out. He has no idea what croup is, he only sees that Drew is having trouble breathing, and hears his wheezy, gasping breaths.

At the urgent care, the doctors quickly confirm that Drew has croup, an apparently severe case of it, and quickly gather medicine. First he is given drops of a steroid in liquid form, drops that he wants NOTHING to do with. I am told to hold Drew down while the nurse struggles to land three successive drops in his mouth. After the first one hits, he screams and the nurse tells me that these drops taste awful and “he might throw up on you…yeah, there’s a good chance he’ll throw up on you, I’ll go get a bucket.” Thankfully, he doesn’t.

After the steroid drops the nurse comes back with a machine with a small mask attached to it. “This is an epinephrine nebulizer,” she explains. “I want you to hold it close to his mouth for a few minutes. He’s going to scream, but you have to keep holding it up to him.” Mike and I accept the instructions and nod. I try to hold Drew as still as possible while Mike controls the mask. The nurse exits the room when the screaming begins and we are left to do as we were told. After two minutes she comes back, checks the machine, and tells us to continue for another two minutes. Four minutes never felt so long. I want to cry because I feel terrible for what Drew’s going through, how badly he feels and how confused he must be at what’s happening, surely wondering why we are pinning him down and shoving something that he doesn’t want into his face. But I don’t cry, reminding myself that I need to grow up a bit, that crying will only make Drew panic more. Neither Mike nor I look at each other for the entire four minutes.

Within an hour Drew is walking up and down the halls with the energy of a thousand kids on Christmas morning. He is giggling and grunting, a little monster orangutan hopped up on steroids and adrenaline in superhero pajamas. Along with the doctors, we all agree that the treatment was a success, and we are sent home.

It’s amazing to me how sick our boy got within a matter of hours. There had been small signs, yes—a runny nose, watery eyes. But we chalked it up to maybe allergies, or a little cold, or the fact that toddlers seem to perpetually have a runny nose. I guess many illnesses—and many far scarier and more sever e than this—crop up this way. There is not a slow progression over time, but rather a swift and frightening kick that sends you from happy family weekend one moment to high-speed, anxious drive to urgent care the next.

Today, Drew seems to be well on the mend. He’s back to toddling around the house, carrying random objects from one room to the next, giggling and grunting all the while. He caught an illness that so many young kids get and handle with relatively little intervention. We were lucky, really. As Mike said in a Tweet last night, “Breaks my heart to see Drew feeling so shitty. Makes me wonder how parents with seriously ill kids cope. Hope I never find out.”

Up to this point, Drew has been an amazing eater. He’s eaten pretty much everything I’ve ever put in front of him, and often with gusto. But I’ve been an avid momblog reader for some time, so I know that great baby eaters don’t always grow into great toddler eaters. Any time a friend or acquaintance has commented on how lucky I am to have such a good eater, I enthusiastically agree and then follow up with an aw shucks, “for now!”

For all the prepared I thought I was, I was somehow ill-prepared for the moment when I proudly forked some grilled squash into my boy’s mouth and he promptly pulled it BACK OUT of his mouth and threw it across the restaurant floor. “No?” I stammered. “You don’t, you don’t like it?” He looked at me with pure challenge in his eyes, a sort of ‘just try me, Mom’ that I did not want to mess with in public. Well, I thought, I’ll just give him the wrap. At least it’s whole wheat! Guess where that ended up? Right next to the nutritious, only-option grilled veggies! A busboy-man walked past right after the veggies got tossed, and I knew he saw, so I sheepishly apologized. I feared he was irritated at the growing mess he’d eventually be responsible for if I didn’t take care of it.

So, friends, what did I do next? I pulled out Mommy’s Magic Stash of Goldfish Crackers! Why, when such nutritious fare was on offer? Because I didn’t want a food fight in a restaurant, I didn’t want to hear (and presumed no one else did either) any more cranky whining from the littlest food critic, and I didn’t want my boy to be hungry. I scarfed down a nutritious (and BORING!) grilled veggie wrap while Drew noshed on Goldfish. Next time, I’m making us both grilled cheese sandwiches from the privacy of our own home and not worrying about the inevitable mess on the floor or any potentially judging eyes.

This was the first time I ever compared my breasts to cheeseburgers.[Note: If you’re a man, you may not want to read any further. I’m going to talk—at length—about breastfeeding. Fair warning.]

But the nurse had a point, and she was speaking a language I could understand, even in a state of utter exhaustion following 25 grueling hours of labor. In such a state, you need a tough-shelled, serve it up straight with a side of compassion real “New YAH-kur” kind of nurse.

I don’t remember that nurse’s name. But I remember that she gave me my first education on breastfeeding. And over the remaining 1.5 days that I spent in the hospital many other nurses whizzed in and out of my loud, crowded room to try to educate me on the finer points. There was one, an Eastern European with a lopsided face who came to my room in the middle of the night, sat beside me on the bed and repeatedly commanded ‘space for breathing!’ while jabbing her index finger between my nipple and Drew’s tiny mouth. She believed that I needed to be careful to ensure that my rapidly expanding, engorged breasts didn’t suffocate the little guy. I didn’t tell her that Cheeseburger Nurse was of the school of thought that babies instinctively know when to come up for air. I was too fixated on her face. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened. Was she born that way? Was there a traumatic event? Is this what Bells Palsy looks like? Perhaps it’s better to fixate on these types of things when you’re suddenly faced with the reality that you your boobs are now responsible for keeping another human alive.

I shared my hospital room with another new mom. Not by choice; this was Manhattan, space is tight everywhere (except in executive offices). During the night, the woman had repeated breakdowns. Her little girl wasn’t latching on. She paged the nurses, cried weepy, frantic tears. The nurses reassured her in soothing tones, but only for a minute or so each time. Then, she was left alone to try again. And again. I sat in my bed, inches away but obscured from view by a thin ugly curtain, unsure what to do. I wasn’t having difficulties.

Or so I thought. Only hindsight made me realize that this probably wasn’t because I was such a pro, but rather because I hadn’t really been feeding Drew. Many of the well-meaning nurses had told me to try feeding him often so that we’d both get the hang of it and so that my milk supply would come in sooner. But unless he was wailing frantically, I didn’t really try. If he wasn’t crying, I figured he was fine. I’m not sure if I was in denial or clueless or a little bit of both. It’s all so overwhelming that first day. Looking back, I don’t think the kid really ate for the first day or two of his life.

Nurses, doctors, anyone with scrubs or a white coat asked me how nursing was going. “Fine,” I responded. I didn’t know how it was supposed to be going. I didn’t know if I was doing it right or if he was getting anything. He couldn’t tell me. I didn’t know how long I was supposed to feed him for, when to switch sides, how to know if he was full. While plenty of people were full of advice as to how to get him to latch on, the rest, I now believe, you just have to learn on your own. You’ll know when you know. But you won’t know until you know. You know?

Away from the hospital and settled at home, I kept up with nursing. I love a challenge, and I was determined to rise to this one. A close friend had continued nursing her son when her mother passed away from cancer. Through the funeral and tremendous grief she kept it up. I thought to myself, if she could make it through such challenging circumstances, what excuse did I have not to keep up? It was hard, yes. But it could have been much harder.

That friend promised it would get better. “I hated it for the first five or six weeks,” she said. “But then, I started to love it.”

“Love it?!” I couldn’t imagine loving a task so painful and so draining. I couldn’t imagine enduring four more weeks until even the possibility of loving it emerged.

The weeks passed, though, in a blur of endless, sleepless cycles. There were breakdowns. When the alarm bell of Drew’s cries went off every two hours, when my nipples cracked open and bled, when cluster feeding struck—feedings every hour for 13 hours straight—and I dissolved into overwhelmed tears—I am the ONLY person who can feed him!—I stuck through it. I do not like to fail. For me, stopping would have felt like failure.

It did get better. The periods between feedings grew longer. I grew to not mind it, then enjoy it and then love it. What did I love? How do I explain it? Physically, the feeling is a bit like that of finally peeing after holding it in on a long car ride. There’s a release. The pressure is gone, you feel empty again, free. Emotionally, now that’s harder to explain. Seeing your child nestled into you, sighing a tiny contented sigh then settling into a drowsy sleep because of something that your body provided—you feel proud, grateful, amazed, powerful. You feel like you could do it again. You feel like it’s worth the discomfort and the hassle. And I think, as much as I hated that it had to be me, all the time, I loved that it had to be me. We all want to be needed. Breastfeeding is neediness taken to an extreme degree.

So I did it again. And again, and again and again and again. Six months passed, then I figured I might as well go for the gusto and try for a full year. I set a new goal—to go straight from breastfeeding to cow’s milk, bypassing formula all together.

It’s true that I had grown to love it. I loved the warm and fuzzies but there were other more superficial things I loved too. I loved that it was free. I loved that I was losing weight at an incredible rate. I loved that I was losing weight at an incredible weight while still being able to eat an incredible amount of food. I loved not having to remember to bring any supplies when we went out (I am terrible about remembering supplies). All I needed to bring was me…and the baby.

Six months turned into a year turned into nearly 14 months. The weaning process was rather drawn out. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer so ‘needed’, at least not in this way. My approach was to drop a feeding, let a week or two go by then drop another. By the end, I was nursing only at bedtime. When two weeks had passed, the typical amount of time I let lapse before dropping a feeding, I made excuses. I said that he still seemed to need it, and I worried aloud that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without it. I knew, though, that he didn’t ‘need’ it any longer. And he would fall asleep, even if it wouldn’t be as gracefully.

I struggled over ending this bond that only he and I could share. The physical act was ending, yes, but I needed to realize that our bond was cemented, and could now grow in so many other ways. One night I finally worked up the courage to drop the feeding. We still settled into the same rocking chair, snuggled close, but this time I brought a sippy cup of water and some books. When Drew turned to me and pointed around in confusion, seemingly wondering when we were going to nurse, I shook my head and said, “No, no we’re all done with that now.” And we are.

On top of the physical labor of parenting, in the toddler stage now comes the actual parenting of parenting. We are learning that our little person now understands so many of the things we say. As Mike pointed out, if he can understand, “Where are your trucks? Go get your trucks?” then he can most likely understand that if he throws a fit at naptime, Mommy might not keep walking out the door. She might come back. Most likely he understands that if he throws his hands up, pinches his little fingers together and throws the most piteous look on his face, Mommy might take a stutter step, second guess herself and throw her unsure arms around this little person who appears to need so much. What he probably needs rather, is a little, how shall we say, behavioral guidance?

On top of maid, chef, nurse and detective we now have to add chessmaster to the hats we parents must wear. We must anticipate the moves that baby—strike that, toddler—will make and plan a swifter, more cunning maneuver. Not that we must always win, but, well, we better ‘win’ more times than not. So much is at stake here.

When Drew was an infant, if I got him down for a nap, fed him, changed him, I considered it a victory. Now the actions and the outcomes are blurry. If I get him to stop whining, was it really a victory? Was the tactic I chose the right one? In its short term success did it ultimately contribute to the long term development of a less than desirable behavior or attitude? In all the ways I go out of my way to show him I love him, that I am paying attention, that I am PRESENT and INVOLVED, am I stifling some independence or coddling too much?

The end goal, for us, is the development of a person who is smart, thoughtful, empathetic, kind, decisive, inclusive, humble, thankful, giving, loving, open-minded, independent. How do we create that? It seems a tall order. It seems downright daunting. It’s a job stretched out over 18+ years. Feedback will come sometimes in days or weeks but most often in years or decades or maybe never. And maybe I’m too presumptuous in thinking I have the power to shape those outcomes. In the most fundamental ways, he was probably mostly built before he came out, right? We are just smoothing the edges here and there? Oh, I don’t know. I’m trying my best. I hope no matter what he’ll always know that.

Dear Drew,

You are one today. Dad and I have been trying to tell you that you’re one, and tell you what to do when someone asks you how old you are. We show you how to hold your index finger up to signal one. Really, it’s just a change in direction as all you want to do lately is point that finger straight ahead at whatever’s in your line of sight. Lately, that’s the Christmas tree and the sign in your room that says ‘Andrew’, your name.

Each morning when you wake up you pull your crazy bedheaded self up to standing and rest your chin on top of your crib, waiting for someone to come get you. One of us scoops you up and immediately you point us towards the sign. We spell your name: A-N-D-R-E-W and say ‘that’s you!’ You smile and point and kick your little legs. You are fresh energy in the mornings and thank the good God in Heaven your mornings now begin a little later than they used to. You are smiles and murmurs and grunts but you are still snuggly. You don’t want to be let down or set free first thing. You want to stay close, grab at my glasses, pull my hair, rub Dadddy’s balding head, hog the remote and change the channel to public access programming.

We love to watch you watching the world. We try to anticipate what you might like when you get older, and the type of person you might become. Maybe none of the things you like today will inform what you become, but in case they do, here are a few (You like that? Kinda Seuss-y wasn’t it?): BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS! You have one shelf on the bookcase just for your books and you could spend all day there without any other entertainment and be perfectly fine. You love to flip through books as fast as your little fingers can carry you, and when you’re done you turn the book over, right side up and flip again. I love books and if you grow up to be a book lover I can be content that I’ve done one thing very, very right. Wherever you are in your life, in this world, a good book can take you somewhere exciting, calming, transformative, healing or just plain fun. No one ever regretted a love of reading, and I hope I can give you that love. It will never let you down.

You love music and sound. You seem to have rhythm, a gift I can take absolutely no credit for. That’s all your dad. You giggle when I turn on the radio, shake your little butt, rock back and forth. One song I will always associate with you is Gentle Hour by Yo La Tengo. It calmed you down when you were a fussy newborn. Every. Single. Time. Later, you liked Little Lion Man by Mumford and Sons. As we drove to and from the pool this summer and the song came on the radio you would perk up, look at me and giggle. These days, you like just about any song, it seems…even the obnoxiously annoying ones that peal out of your brightly colored plastic toys. But that’s ok. If it makes you happy, I’m happy.

You love to go fast. When we are out shopping and you are perched high in the shopping cart I speed you through parking lots like we are in a race. Sure, the other shoppers might think I’m nuts, maybe even a reckless mom. But you throw your head back and laugh your heart-melting little boy chuckle and all I can do is run faster (and keep a keen eye out for errant cars). Your hair flies straight up in the wind we create and you turn your head this way and that, taking in the world as it looks in high speed.

We think you’re happy, smart, funny, sweet, mischievous, outgoing and adventurous. If none of these turn out to be you–if the opposite turns out to be true–we will still love you endlessly. You are our boy and we couldn’t be prouder.