becoming daddy

Happy Birthday!  It’s hard to believe that you’ve been here for an entire year!  Sometimes, I can’t even picture what life was like without you, and yet sometimes it seems like only yesterday we were all crowded around Momma and meeting you for the first time.  

One of my old friends said that having a daughter is extra special for a Daddy.  I haven’t decided yet if that’s true, because both you and your brother are both equally — if not slightly differently — wonderful.  But there are definitely the things about you that make you so special.  

When you are happy (which is usually), you open your mouth in the widest smile possible. It’s as if you have too much joy and you simply have to share it or else you’ll explode.  And share you do; it’s simply impossible not to smile along with you.  

You love to laugh … at Sally, at your big brother, at Pastor Dean, at Papa and Grampa and everyone else, but when you laugh with me it sounds a little different.  Maybe I’m just being selfish, but I hope you keep that laugh forever as you grow up into a beautiful girl, young woman and adult.  

This year is going to be different as you move from being The Baby to being a big sister, but like I told your Momma, you’ll *always* be my Baby.  

Love, Daddy

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!! We wanted to tell you how you are the bestest momma in the whole wide world!!!! Thank you for always helping us do stuff, even when it’s gross.  Thank you for letting us use your shoulder and your leg and your sleeve as a napkin or a kleenex, especially lately when we were both really sick and snotty.  

Thank you for being so cuddly when we don’t feel good.  Sometimes sitting with you on the couch is teh best medicine!  

Thank you for always knowing what we want, like when we are tired and in bed but won’t go to sleep or lay down.  You always know if we just want water or to have our blankies a special way.  and you always tuck us in better than Daddy.  

Thank you for always wanting things to be pretty and clean and special.  You worked so hard to make our bedrooms so fun and special and just for us.  

and thank you for laughing with us so much. Daddy says that you have a special laugh just for us, and it’s one of his most favoritest things about you.  He says that your whole face just lights up when you get home from work, even when you’re tired.  

Most of all, thank you for being the most beautiful and wonderful and incredible mother I have ever seen (and for being Daddy’s bestest friend! He couldn’t do it without you. we may be little, but even we know that)

Love, Amos and Vera (and Daddy)

Yesterday, your Momma and I dropped you off at preschool for the first time.  We had always planned on keeping you at home until kindergarten, but it’s best for you and your learning if you get a little jump on school.  We got a little list of school supplies, stuffed your monster backpack with your things, and off we went down the road for your first day.  

We were early, so we could meet your teachers and see your classroom again, and then we headed back outside where the official drop-off is.  You loved seeing the buses there dropping off the kids, and you held your teacher’s hand as she walked up to get another student.  Of course, being Amos, you also pulled away and sprinted back down the sidewalk … but you were just coming to get me.  When it was time, you held her hand and marched away with the other kids around the corner and out of sight.  

You were scared — that, we could see.  You looked back a couple times, and it was clear that you were unsure of this new development.  But you were so brave.  You went and had a great time with your new teachers and your new friends and you were excited to go back today.  

I was less excited; you’re my little boy!  It was hard to think about you growing up and walking away.  I had the same pang in the pit of my stomach today when you went around that same corner and out of my sight again.  It’s the pang that every parent feels the first time their kids go spend the night somewhere or go away to camp or the first time they have to leave their kids with a sitter.  It’s the pang that every parent felt near the end of Toy Story 3 when Andy’s mom is looking at his empty room and realizes that it’s all true; he really is leaving.  

This pang doesn’t happen because we don’t want you to grow up; it’s because every parent can see their child with two sets of eyes.  We see you as the boy, adolescent, man that you are in this moment, but we also see you as you were … as a newborn, a crawler, first learning to walk, first learning to talk.  Every time there’s a first time (and sometimes for the second time and sometimes for the fortieth time), we have flashbacks to your smiles and tears and bumps and bruises.  I don’t know if it goes away (you’re still just a little guy), but I hope not.  

Love, Daddy