Dear Cameron,
Your turning one year old has different implications for me than your sister turning one. It has different implications because when she turned one, you were already almost 20 weeks old growing big and strong in my belly. I knew then that it was only a short matter of time before I would get to watch another of my babies have their first birthday. But now, this time, there is no other baby except you. There is no baby growing in my belly and it feels so final. It feels like the end of an era, the end of the baby days in our house and some days, on the hardest of hard days, I welcome that change. But then there are the great days, the days where I sit back and watch you stumble around learning to walk and talk and I watch as your relationship with your big sister starts to blossom, that I hold on to you so tightly that my knuckles are white never wanting you to grow a single inch bigger. I get choked up on that lump that’s always sitting there in my throat just thinking about it being over. When I rock you to sleep tonight I imagine I'll cry harder and mourn longer because tonight you turn from baby to toddler. And tonight my baby-rearing days are more-than-likely over.
The baby days are not over because I couldn't stand to have one or two more of you around. Because I would, if given the opportunity, take five more babies exactly like you. They are likely over because of your perfection, because I want to spend every minute of the rest of my life focusing my attention on you and your sister. You are enough, you are more than enough; I like to think you completed our family on that crisp November day a year ago today.
This year whizzed by in the blink of an eye as I imagine every year of the rest of my life will. One day I woke up after the hormones had worn off and my body had adjusted to never sleeping and there you were. You with your beautiful, big blue eyes that take up your whole face and your insanely handsome smile and the delicacy of your baby skin brushing up against my lips. I won’t ever forget it; I promise myself that, I will tell my mind over and over again to remember each and every detail of the baby you are today.
I won’t ever forget how hard you are to hold, always diving and grabbing and just so (overwhelmingly sometimes) BUSY. You are all boy from your infatuation with balls and electronics and toy cars to how aggressively you shovel your food into your mouth making the biggest mess of biggest messes. At least once a week when he’s cleaning up your high chair, your Dad says, “Bubby really outdid himself tonight; I think this is his biggest mess ever.” We don’t have much time to reflect on the grandness of that statement, your biggest mess ever, because before he can get the words out of his mouth we’ll look over and you’ll have climbed your little baby butt onto a chair and will be standing there on the armrest chewing on the lamp cord. I don’t know where you got your nose for trouble but baby proofing took on a whole new meaning the day you came home.
I never thought I’d know another love like I feel for your sister but you proved me wrong. From the minute you came rushing out and your dad looked at me with this totally humbled, astonished and purely excited look on his face and said “It’s a BOY, can you believe we have a SON” to today, the day that I watch you blow out your first birthday candle. You have my heart, son, what was left to give, I gave to you.
You have always made me work harder for your affection than your sister did and in some ways that makes me want you all the more. I pout sometimes when you make it clear that you want Daddy to read your books and give you your bottle before bed because I long to hold you, to kiss your sweet cheeks, to try over and over again to explain to you just how much I love you. I may never get the words right, Cameron, but I’ll never quit trying.
Happy Birthday, my sweet, my Bubby, my little baby boy.
Mama
