5 Years

Dear Noble, 

You'll be six tomorrow. Before that happens I want to remember this five-ness you've perfected. You're in kindergarten, and as we walk to school in the morning you'll be talking and thinking and making wild connections from door to door. This past year you have had many many emotions, given a great many more speeches, (some aggressive) and broken a lot of eggs. I assume you're breaking eggs in the grass for fun. Are you doing magick? I love you and I'm very tired now, here's some favorites. (Baby August for scale). 

Love, 

Mom

4 Years

 Dear Noble,

Hi!

If you're reading this then you've mastered the skills I am now trying to teach you. You're in school-from-home, pre K! You've been at it virtually for almost a month, tracing cursive letters, matching, identifying, sweeping, wiping, drawing, counting and forgoing in person learning while Covid-19 rages on.

 When I was a little girl I didn't have much access to global pandemics, quarantines, or iPads, so I have to congratulate you for so intrepidly charging ahead, especially when we have to impose iPad breaks. You dream a lot about what we'll do when the sickness is over, and I love that you can see all the way to the other side of this, which reminds me how fatalistic I am, and how very optimistic you are. 

You're the happiest thing I've ever been friends with. You remind me to let things go, draw things in, hold them close and set them free, every day. You've watched a lot of tv this year, which is highly convenient for me and ferociously habit-forming for you. Even if you are playing a game on a device I feel guilty, like I haven't made enough of an effort to edify your world view, to build your make believe muscles, or to just give you a blank space to create in. Then I remember how much I learned from tv, how relaxing it was to learn by observing, how much independence comes with learning technology and how much I need to treat my mom brain to some well-deserved "quiet". If you should grow up to be a mommy, I will try to remind you of this when you feel shame for putting your kid in the nanny spacepod, or whatever it is you default to when you need to nap or think or poop in peace. 

Today you are four, and here's what you did.

You woke up and went straight to playing with the birthday presents Gigi gave you, and shared them with Wiley, your constant birthday companion. We rented a beach house with our friends and family for the weekend, so you had lots of salty adventures in Surfside with all your favorite people (save for Wolfie) ate lots of cupcakes and ran back and forth through the beach house to your heart's content. When we left the beach it was for another gift -surprise!- a back yard trampoline at home. I don't know how long you've been wishing for one, but my wait has been on for over 30 years. Thank you for making my dream a reality by super charging your lust for life when you haven't had enough exercise at the end of the day! Home recreational equipment and melatonin really keep this ship afloat.

Let me tell you, your pranks make everything really zing.  Just a few days ago I was making your cupcakes, rainbow tie-dye creations that I spent many spoonfuls of patience on, and when I pulled them out of the oven I was overwhelmed with fun when I saw you had turned the oven from 350 to broil!!! When we got home from our trip and I found the freezer melting, I just knew you'd zinged me before we left town by turning the fridge dial to "off" for maximum entertainment! Don't get me started on your invisible socks, disappearing gum routine, or your razzle dazzle defiance when I ask you to clean up. You are a super chatty, "potty-trained" cyclone of non stop amusement and I can't wait to see what you'll do next!

I love you, you are wonderful. You are, hands down, the best snuggle I've ever had. Please remember how I adore you when I'm juggling morality, parenting tropes, patience, impatience and your relationship with cause and effect. 

I love you, Noble. You are a maniac and very sweet about it. 

Fondly,

Mom

3 Years

Judging by the little blurb below, I was too tired and distracted last year to even bother with posting this. Here it is now, in its original brevity

Here she is; paragon of enthusiasm, radiant strategist, magnificent beast and our roommate, Noble. In any situation, she's a presence. Starting conversations, telling jokes and stories about all sorts of unwon certainties. If she answers 'yes' when asked if she knows something, she'll say 'I don't know' when asked to explain.
Noble is 3 now, and I have no time or energy to say anything more. 

2 Years

From one to two in as many bites

"Ahp-a-tah!" (octopus)
"No actually, that's a dismembered, former gecko stuck to your pillow. Octopuses are found in water.
Nope, that's your drinking cup you're filling with noodles.
Oh, right. Like an octopus in water."

I'll tell you now that it's a struggle not to simply list her bodacious vocabulary instead of the fraught summary of the last six months I'm about to leave here.
And so, a compromise:

Favorite story: The ABCs
Favorite song: Happy Birthday,
(currently we're singing it to Uncle Bobby every day)
Worst habit: Running into the street
Celebrity idol: Elmo
Guilty pleasure: Attempting to drive without a license
Favorite lipstick color: Whatever's edible
Power play: Opening the fridge
Richest resource: Size 8 shoes
Scarcest resource: Juice boxes

Two years ago after an appropriate amount of thrashing and pushing, Noble appeared 100% alive. Big success. These days I look for ways to quantify her enormous changes, so I laid out all her baby blankets and meditated on the joy I can access just by looking at all the work by people who welcomed her to the world. At two, she is learning fast. Words have never proven themselves to be more powerful than when I ask her for a compound favor and get it delivered to the letter. She is fearless around cars, continues to stand in her high chair even after sustaining a skull-fracturing fall, friendly, and even more fancy free than she was at one, which is saying something.

This girl is often one shoe-ed, crusty- nosed, eager, helpful, and an absolute asset to her community. Much like Arya Stark, she holds fast to her holy list whenever she finds a quiet moment: "Mommy, Daddy, Gigi, Paw Paw, Grandma, Grandpa, Debbie, Wolfie, Sage, Wiley, Rush, Audrey, Amber, Bobby." (Hil - we're working on it.) Debbie, her doll, rarely gets top billing but it should be noted that she spent a little time with our friend Debbie and very organically chose the name for her baby. What she intends to do with this list remains to be seen.

Upon passing me in the hall this week she said, "Coo mee" (excuse me) and has continued to showcase the many uses for "thank you" and "don't bite". She peed on a pack of toilet paper the other day, and learned how to spit water into the mirror with just the right trajectory to feel a splash back. Tiny discoveries pop up every. damn. day, and we do our best to give her the play space to explore without hovering. It's amazing to watch her cruise around the farmers market completely on her own, walking well ahead of us and making connections like the mayor of her knee high society.  She likes painting the sink and tub in water color, using a green bingo dabber as a toothbrush and squirms bloody murder when I try to use an appropriate apparatus to clean her teeth,
trim her nails or suggest that we
ever stop painting.

Four months ago, she was awarded a little cousin, just as her on-again-off-again BFF Wiley got a little brother. Having two babies to choose from is just how she likes it. I am so tempted to arrange for her to sit on the couch and hold one of them, but it might turn into a "more juice" situation so I'm holding off. I feel especially lucky that she hasn't asked me for a baby of her own, and I'm banking on these two being small and all-engrossing to her for a long time.

Please join us in wishing her many more extra-diaper-on-the-outside occasions, and lots more birthdays full of friends and conveniently loaned bouncy houses. And Louie Anderson look-alike contests.

💗