Happy Birthday Miss O!

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I remember when you were born ... when we were in the hospital, I heard all these other newborns wailing away, and you were so quiet. Barely made a peep. I thought I was uber-lucky and had one of those mythical "easy babies".



Hah.

Ha-ha!

Then we came home.

You showed me. Our first few months were hellish at times. You never slept unless I was wearing you in a sling, wrap or, eventually, thankfully, on my back in a mei tai or soft-sided carrier. It took around 2 hours of nursing, walking, bouncing, swinging and a vacuum running nonstop three feet from our heads to get you to sleep at night. How you and I survived those months, I'll never know.



But we did. The napping-in-carrier persisted, but we got the nighttime shenanigans down to 45-60 minutes. And sometimes you'd deign to nap on me or, rarer still, on your Boppy. Even with the napping-in-carrier, Bean started part-time preschool and I realized I could walk and read, so I knocked out 130+ books that year and found a measure of Zen. And you started to show your personality, and realized how very cool your big sister is.



And you kept growing. Shockingly, your personality was one of outspoken single-mindedness, a trait that must come from your father and certainly isn't shared by your sister or I. You showed you were just as snuggly and sweet as your big sister, but possessed a self-reliance that she didn't. You could (and still do) play happily by yourself, and make your own fun.



You turned one, and showed that spending so much time around your totally unique sister means that you're her Mini-Me.



Around one, you also developed the ability to throw a hairy sh*t fit over not getting your way. You built it into a traveling road show that went (and sometimes still goes) something like this: Try to get your way; if thwarted, scream and throw self on ground; if audience moves away, pick self up, cease tantrum, track them down, throw self on floor and resume histrionics. Lather, rinse, repeat as needed.



Your survival, however, was guaranteed by your ability to elevate your cuteness slightly above your hissy fits







As the final months of your second year have ticked down, you've shown yourself to be quite the conversationalist. You took your sweet time talking, perhaps because you have such a blabbermouth mommy and a big sister who does enough talking for all of us, but once you started, you didn't stop.

You've also demonstrated a great sense of humor, the physicality (and low pain threshold) needed to have a great time with your big sister, and a quirkiness and sweetness that endears you to all.









So Happy Birthday baby girl. I cannot wait to see what the next year brings us!

Love,
Mommy
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