To Matilda on Her First Birthday

Dear Matilda,
You are one today. I just put you down for the night and my cheeks are still wet with tears. I think your Daddy thought I was crazy, but that's not it. I am just sad that you are not a baby anymore. The tears caught me by surprise; I did not cry on Rollie's first birthday. Maybe it is that he is a boy, or that he has never seemed to need me as much as you do. I think, though, that it's the knowledge that you are my last baby. The last baby i will carry in my womb, the last baby i will wait for with anticipation, making lists of names, and imagining hair texture and eye and hair color, and coloring and height. I can still remember how much more active you were in utero, and I know now that it really does mirror your personality. You are the last one I gave birth to, and there is nothing that has ever made me feel more like a woman than giving birth. Your birth was a blessing to me, so very different from the fear and pain that I felt with Rollie's. Afterwards, you took to breastfeeding like a champ, and I had my moment of A Baby Story that I had felt so robbed of the first time around.

Those first few days with you were a blur, but i remember worrying about how Rollie would take to you. I need not have worried. He adores you, and is working on sharing, too. I feel like I have been more laidback about parenting you than i was with Rollie, but in other ways, I feel like I baby you more. I don't know if it is the fact that you are a girl, or your very cuddly personality, the way you are happiest being held, and preferably by me.

Like Rollie, you have been quick to develop your precise motor skills, like drinking from a cup, or pincer grasp. You have taken longer to gain mobility. You didn't get your first tooth until around Rollie's third birthday. You took to crawling at ten months, and could support your weight on your legs, but did not pull up on your own until this very morning! What a wonderful birthday gift to me to wake up in a motel room in Charlotte this morning to you standing in your crib waiting for me to pick you up. I am sure you will be doing it regularly soon, probably getting stuck standing in your crib for a few nights, and quickly moving to standing on your own and cruising and then walking. I am content to wait.

You have a funny sense of humor, and I think you have a devilish streak. You are already testing me, and are less quick to stop undesirable behavior at just a "no" than your brother way. I say "no" and you repeat the behavior to see if I really mean it. You are currently in the throw-food-and-drink-off-your-high-chair-tray-to-see-what-I-do stage. This also applies to electrical outlets, houseplants, pet food and water, and the sleeping dog. I am reminded of my grandmother Palmer's story of my three-year-old father being forbidden to ride his tricycle around the corner and out of her sight, and his propensity for doing just that as soon as the words had left her lips. There are so many times that I wish I could discuss parenthood with my grandmas Evelyn and Vivian. They would have adored you so, that they would have taken your side every time.

Rollie started school at the beginning of September. He attends three days a week from 9-12. This has become our "Girls time." I often feel some guilt at how you don't have the freedom to explore toys in the same way that Rollie did. It seems that every time you reach for something, or find it interesting, Rollie is there to quickly take it from you and play with it himself. I also worry that with all of his talking and outgoingness, that you get a little lost in the shuffle, and that I don't spend quite as much time talking and playing with you one-on-one that I did with him. I am guessing this is the natural order of things, and that it is why there are interesting books published on the effects of birth order on personality (a highly fascinating subject to me, actually), but it does not mean that I am not trying to spend more time with you, reading, talking and taking pictures of you. Our three-day-a-week girl time has been a wonderful way of assuaging that guilt, plus, you and i can go browse stores together, which is something we can never do with Rollie around. As I write this, you are sitting on the floor next to me, playing with the toys you recieved for your birthday (and Rollie co-opted not long after) and with Rollie's matchbox cars. Tee hee hee. . . wouldn't he just die if he knew?

You gave up breastfeeding one week ago today. Up until four weeks ago, you were breastfeeding three times a day, with a bottle of formula every night before bed. I have never been a purist when it comes to breastfeeding, but I think i will write more about that later, when I have had the time to let the whole experience sink in a little more and when I can look at it from a bit of a distance. I started weaning you at that four week countdown, cutting out a feeding a week: First, the mid-afternoon, then the lunchtime feeding. At that point, there were only the morning feeding and the evening bottle. The plan was that I would cut out the evening bottle, then the morning feeding last, but you had different ideas about that. Exactly one week before your birthday, last Sunday, you just decided that you were simply too busy for this breastfeeding business, and you fought and cried to get out of my arms and on with your morning. This was not the loving last moment of our nursing relationship for which I was hoping, but so be it. I let you down off the chair, and moved on to fix you breakfast.

[You just let out a humongous belch, looked at me in surprise, and then burst out laughing, so very pleased with yourself. One day soon, I will teach you to say "excuse me," like Rollie does when he burps, but for now, I am happy to let you revel in the amazing functions of your little body. You are now crawling around with one of Rollie's cars, the "benzo," I believe, in your mouth, and growling and laughing as you go.]

Once you got the hang of crawling, you realized that you could follow me everywhere. I stand up to go pee, you follow me into the bathroom, sitting back on your knees, and holding your arms up to me. I cook dinner? You are wrapped around my ankles like leg warmers. I would be lying if I didn't say that it was alternately flattering and endearing, and at the same time completely exhausting and smothering. Such is motherhood, i have found. You have fit into our lives so completely in this past year, and you have completed a puzzle i have wondered about ever since I played the board game Life with Karen and Lisa growing up. We would collect children as if they were candy, sometimes needing to use more than one car just to fit them all in, and sometimes we would have a baby name book at hand, and bother with naming them all, and always, throughout my life, I have wondered who my children would be and what their names would be. I could not have imagined the joy and the pain of loving two little people so much. You are the final pink peg in my car. You are my Matilda, Tiller, Tiller baDiller, Phyllis Diller. I love you, baby. Happy birthday.