Closing in on two

Can anyone else believe my Shmoo is just a month from her 2nd birthday? I have to admit, I am just now starting to believe it.

There are such huge parts of me, probably deeply in need of massage and body-memory-release, that can't accept that this is a child I get to keep. I knew, I knew something was wrong with her body; I knew it when I was pregnant and I knew it when she was born. I knew it that whole first year, when everyone said I was wrong. I didn't connect with her because I could not assimilate the information I had coming at me internally and externally. If she's in danger, if she's struggling, if she might make it, and if no one but me believes it, then no one will help her, and she just won't make it. Better not to fall in love.

She's such a different child now. All the energy she conserved for breathing is now channelled in the normal, healthy ways an active toddler uses to explore her world. Yesterday, she hung from a bar above a slide, swung one arm out to grab the awning above, and tumbled five feet to the ground, face-first. I watched her from three feet away, in slow motion, and noted how heavy she looked. In those seconds she took to fall, I thought to myself: she'll survive this.

And, yes, she did. She bit her bottom lip and that's it. A few minutes later, she was chattering away in the stroller as we made our way home from the park. This morning she told True about it , nodding seriously, pointing at her lip and saying "A-Shmoo bump a-lip. Park." Then she tackled him and tried to tickle him.

She is just so delicious now, so apple-dumpling, so trampoline, so wet kiss and banjo tune, so dripping ice cream and splashing kiddie pool, so bouncing puppy and 75-degrees-and-sunny. She's intense and demanding sometimes, and she's still Shmoo, but the good times now finally outnumber the challenging ones. And she's going to survive. She really is.