Dear Peanut...

Dear Peanut:

In celebration of my second Mother's Day, I thought it would be a good time to write you a little letter and tell you how very very blessed I am to be your mama.

Of course I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you, but it's been even more amazing to get to know you and to realize that you are developing a strong personality of your own. I know you get frustrated sometimes because you are so perceptive and smart, and you want to try to do things that, at 19 months, are still beyond your reach. That's when you get mad and start howling and sometimes smack me or your daddy. But I love that as soon as we remind you about our "no hitting" rule, you get that look of concern on your face, because you know we don't like that, and you fling your arms around us to make sure we aren't really mad at you. Which we couldn't possibly be.

I love the way you seem to understand a scary amount of what is going on around you, and the way you make your requests undeniably clear. You want cheese and crackers for breakfast, every day, and you're going to keep telling us so even though we keep giving you Eggos and bananas. I guess you're thinking that, dense though we are, eventually we'll figure it out and serve up your cheese plate at 6 a.m.

I love the way you look slightly concerned and say "Mine!" when other kids climb onto the playground equipment you happen to be using at the time. But you never go and push anybody off of it.

I promise to teach you to be as strong and independent and fearless as you can possibly be, and to love yourself no matter what you look like or what you weigh. (But if present trends continue, and "beautiful" and "gorgeous" remain people's first reactions when they meet you, I'll try to teach you to deal with that reality, without becoming too full of yourself because of it.)

I hope very much that you grow up to love science and math like your daddy, so that your first job out of college pays way more than the slave wages I earned for my first journalism gig. And I pray that all through your school years you'll be able to look the bullies in the eye with pity and laugh.

I'm so grateful that you came into my life.

Love,

Mama