It is 2:00 pm on the Monday before Lia's first birthday. I'm standing here watching my almost 1-year old sleeping in her pack 'n play, counting the rise and fall of her little chest with every sweet and blessed breath she takes. I often do this - stand in the doorway like a stalker – just staring at this wondrous creature of light trying to memorize every feature of her beautiful face before the next change occurs. The changes come fast and furious these days...soft brown curls tinged with gold that are now long enough for me to easily tuck behind her ears...four upper teeth making their appearance all at once in addition to the two tiny ones that have settled in at the bottom.
How did we get here??? I can't figure it out. Time has a funny way of messing with your mind – where 5 minutes can feel like 5 hours, and whole days and weeks can feel like mere seconds. I blinked and my Sweetest Pea - who was JUST a newborn 20 seconds ago –is now a toddler. This girl is everything to me. She is the happiest song I have ever written and sung. She is the melody that keeps in time to the beat of my heart. And while a crack still - and will always remain - in the space I hold for Ligaya, my heart is as close to whole as it's ever going to be. What is there is full to bursting.
This year has been quite the trip - each milestone Lia hits is like a favorite track on the greatest playlist ever. In my mind, I'm quick to press rewind, rewind, rewind as I attempt to memorize every detail of each day, wishing there was a way to slow it all down. I wish my brain had the capacity to hold it all in, but that would probably just make me weirder than I already am.
Me: Hey Lia, remember that one time when you were a baby? Your poop dried on my arm and someone thought it was baby food so they helped me wipe it off. Remember?
Lia (at 40): MOM!!!
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| WEIRD |
It's 4:00 pm and she's been awake for a little while now, her baby steps no longer tentative as she run-walks across her play yard. She gives herself a round of applause after reaching her destination. Again, I ask myself, HOW DID WE GET HERE??? I remember singing to Lia when she was still inside me. I prayed to a God I had a love/hate relationship with that I would get the chance to sing to her someday on the outside. Well, shave my head and call me Anne Hathaway circa 2013 because - "it came true!". I now have the opportunity to do that for her AND with her every single day. She loves singing and music, the sound of cars, kittens meowing, and people laughing. She is joy incarnate and I am luckier than that lady who won the $750 million Powerball (for those of you who've followed some of my previous posts about never winning the lottery no matter how hard I try, you know this is huge).
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| Photo: Ly Johnson Photography |
Ah, she's caught me staring and points a chubby little finger in my direction. I point back and am rewarded with a six-toothed smile that warms the room like a thousand blazing suns. God, how I love her. The first time she giggled, my heart leapt from my chest so fast and so hard I forgot how to breathe. In my shock, I didn't have a chance to record it on camera - and that's ok – not everything has to be Instagrammed. It was mine – all mine, just for that one moment. She is my Precious, but I am no Gollum, or Goll-mum, should I say (because it's never too late for an odd LOTR reference, amirite?).
4:10 pm.
She's taken a tumble, but instead of crying, gets back up again (thank you, Trolls). Lia is resilient and determined. I hope she never loses these traits. She is curious about everything and I hope she stays this way for always. When she was a few days old, I whispered in her tiny ear all the magical places her dad and I have visited, all the things we have done to make a life together. I am always talking, talking, talking to her. Every day I tell her about her sister who would have been 5 this year. How has it already been 5 years? This is the saddest part of our story. God, how I wish Ligaya could see all of this.
9:00 pm.
She is asleep now with a belly full of milk, and I am once again staring at the rise and fall of her chest. I whisper our nightly prayer - that she is blessed with an amazing life, one filled with love, beauty, and wonder. I pray she makes it what she wants it to be, that she won't inherit my awkwardness, or crazy hair, or propensity for laziness, and my unnatural love affair with food; that she'll be active like her father, but remember that it's also okay to relax, to call in sick to work every once in a while, to not be so hard on herself. I pray she will be kind and adventurous, honest, discerning. I beg God to keep her safe from harm and to keep her happy, healthy, and wise. I pray I live long enough to see her dreams come true, and that in the end, she outlives me by a thousand years.
Just a few more days now and my Sweetest Pea turns one.
Greatest. Playlist. EVER.
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| Photo: Ly Johnson Photography |
