Evelyn is five now. Five.
Seems like a lifetime ago (and just yesterday) when we were at a friend's wedding in Kansas and I was bored while Jonathan did groomsman stuff so I ran to target and took the test in the church bathroom and found out about Mouse.
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| The day we found out we were going to be parents. |
How clearly I remember pregnancy. All the excitement. All the vomiting. The anticipation of labor and delivery. The indescribable feeling of becoming a mother.
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| 37 weeks... and two days from meeting Mouse! |
It's funny what you remember from those first few weeks. You marvel at the physical and psychological effects of sleep deprivation. You cry a lot. You laugh. You eat. You have nightmares of dropping the baby. You soak in the joy of watching your partner love and care for this tiny child.
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| One of my favorite pictures ever in the history of time. |
Evelyn was born on a Wednesday morning. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Labor and delivery were difficult and scary and painful and exhilarating and empowering and beautiful. We joke that she was born with a furrowed brow. Quiet. Critical. Perfect.
Her first year brought some traveling. She dipped her toes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. She toured Washington, D.C. and touched the Washington Monument and nursed at Lincoln's feet. She went on the Golden Gate Bridge, toured a winery in Sonoma, and sat among the giant Redwoods.
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| Loving Gideon |
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| Walking with Kangaroos at Tanganyika |
She danced and painted and snuggled and danced some more. We went to Kansas. We played. And then she was three. Fully in love with the ocean.
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| Happy at the sea. |
And painting.
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| Always painting. |
When she was three, Evelyn's dad got really sick for a while. He was better by the time she turned four. It was hard while he was sick, and Evelyn missed him very much.
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| At Duke Hospital on Christmas Day, 2013 |
But then she was four and BAM, that little baby Evelyn was gone. And that precocious toddler was gone. And this little girl was there.
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| So big. |
Evelyn at four was funny, and sweet. She loved to organize everything. She needed entire families of things - the Mommy and Daddy and baby stuffed fox family, the Mommy and Daddy and brother and sister giraffe figurines. Families everywhere.
Our family shifted when Evelyn was four, too. I changed career paths and ended up working far too much. My work-life balance was entirely out of whack. I started to process the feelings I'd not processed when Jonathan was sick, and I got pretty overwhelmed. Evelyn leaned on her dad in her fourth year. They made up new games and loved each other deeply. As Gideon grew, Evelyn and Gideon's sibling relationship developed and they laughed and played and fought and learned from each other all the time.
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| Messy love. Wouldn't trade it. |
And now, she's five. Life is different when you're five. Everything is new. We were going to the park last week, a park we've been to before, and Evelyn was quite excited. She said, "Mommy, I've been to this park when I was three and I've been to this park when I was four, but I've
never been when I'm five." She says "perhaps" a lot. She picks up on phrases from Aesop's fables and out of the blue she'll say things like, "Heaven helps those who help themselves," or, "That's a tough nut to crack." She loves her transitional objects (red fuzzy and her thumb). She loves her brother and her family and dancing and painting and the ocean. She's a pretty incredible kid.
She wanted an Elsa cake for her birthday. I remember wanting one of those Barbie dress cakes when I was little, and I thought "Hell yes! This is my time to shine! I'm going to be mother of the year!" I plotted and schemed and discussed with friends the intricacies of creating this cake. I bought a special cake pan. And then it was midnight on Evelyn's fifth birthday-eve and I attempted to make the cake. It. Was. Terrible. When I put the doll in, the cake split in two. I spackled it together with lots and lots of frosting. I let the plastic wrap on the doll because by that point it was clear that this was not going to be the cake I envisioned.
And Evelyn? My daughter. So much my daughter. Here's what she thought about it:
Love this kid. Happy birthday, Mouse.
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