While the last month has been mostly filled with craziness over the birth of your little brother, the past year has been, for the most part, all about you. For that matter, the past three years (plus the 10 months of your gestation) have been all about you. For better or worse, you are our defacto parenting starter kit. We try out stuff on you, see if it sticks, and file it away for future use on Elliott.
Here are some of my favorite parts of the past year of your life:
I can’t put my finger on exactly when it clicked, but you fell for choo-choos last year. Hard. Specifically, your passion rests on Thomas The Tank Engine. Your father and I joke that your collection of Thomas trains is our 401(k), and that is not so much a joke anymore. Thomas ain’t cheap.
Over the past couple of months, you finally started singing. I know that I’ve sung to you since day one (sorry about that), your dad used to sing Guided By Voices to get you to sleep as an infant (“Motor Away” being one of your favorites), but you never really picked up the singing thing. Recently, we’ve been singing “Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star,” “The Alphabet Song,” and you often sing along with tunes on the stereo or TV (when you think we’re not looking).
One of the sweetest things you do as a big brother is play “This Little Piggy” with Elliott’s toes. What’s especially cute is your substitutions of “Choo-Choo Store” for “market” and “chicken nuggets” for “roast beef.” You melted Daddy’s heart today when he heard this for the first time.
When I was pregnant, your favorite thing was to “put bellies together.” This involved us both pulling up our shirts, lining up our bellybuttons and pressing them together. You picked this up after one of my overly-complicated explanations of what bellybuttons are and how that was how you used to be connected to me when you were inside me. When we put our bellies together, we would talk about how maybe Baby Elliott had his belly lined up with ours too.
Towards the end of my pregnancy, you found a childbirth book with some delivery photos in it. Instead of being scared or grossed-out, you were fascinated and so excited to talk about where the babies come out. There was pointing. It was funny, and you were way more excited about the baby coming out in that particular fashion than me.
All of your grandmas and grandpas love you so much. And now, you talk about how much you love them, too. You know who “Grandma Libby” is, and you get so excited when I tell you that she’s coming to visit. You ask about “Grandpa Alan and Mrs. Margie” and ask, “What’s Grandma Martha and Grandpa Jim doing?” You even spent five whole days with Grandma Martha and Grandpa Jim while Daddy and I lived it up at the Derby this year.
When I was pregnant and crazy sometimes and would cry, you would climb up on my lap, wipe away my tears and ask, “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
You learned to say a prayer this year, and now you and I pray together each night before bed. You can say the prayer all by yourself.
Pretty much everyone you meet loves you. You are shy, but polite. You shake older people’s hands with complete solemnity. When people ask you your name, they never understand what you say. Ditto on the name of your brother. Your playgroup friends always seem to excited to play with you, but you spend most of the playtime off by yourself. You don’t make trouble and rarely fight over a toy. You are pretty good at taking turns, even.
There’s been bad stuff too, but this is your birthday. Let’s only think about the good stuff today.
Happy Birthday, Auggie.
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