A Letter To My Daughter...

Dear Ruby,

As I sit here & type this you are happily playing around the house with your beloved friend Bear. It's amazing to me how much you're growing right before my eyes. Last night, for instance, was a big night in our house as you spent your first night in a big girl bed! (Momma's old day bed from my high school days, talk about some memories...) I was proud that you were ready, (secretly I wanted you to still be my baby in the crib...), I was nervous as hell that you'd 'fall out', (you never did...), and I heard you wake up happily this morning proclaiming, "I up Momma! Ruby a big girl! I in a big girl bed!". Baby, when you say such amazing things to me over the monitor, it makes my eyes well up with tears, bittersweet tears, filled with both joy & sorrow. Joy that my girl truly is growing up, and sorrow that my days with a 'baby' are fast dissolving. It's true what other parents say that most 'parents to-be' disregard as I did... the old "it goes by so fast, they'll be grown before you know it...etc". I didn't believe it. I should have listened with my heart to that one, because right now, as the little girl I call Ruby is playing independently all around the house, anywhere but where I am because she no longer needs me as much as she once did, I feel my heartstrings, (be they red or any other color for that matter...) being pulled with a fierceness that I can't make stop. It's part of the pangs of parenthood I suppose... watching your baby become a little girl. You are a little wonder in my eyes. How you not only can speak English but Italian as well, blows me away! You are the best little sponge when it comes to learning new information, and the other night at dinner when you, all of your own doing, said in perfect pronunciation to everyone at the table, "Momma, Nonno bevi vino!"- (Momma, Nonno's drinking wine!) we all stopped & looked at each other in amazement. You are no longer that little wriggly girl who just babbled, drooled, couldn't crawl or walk, or take a step. No, you are not that baby any longer. Now, you are this big beautiful smart girl who never ceases to blow me away with what you've learned. You blasted through crawling like a pro only to graduate to cruising, then walking and now you can out run even me! You have full on conversations in two languages with your friend Bear and make a mean invisible tea for your splendid tea parties, which, by the way, is still my favorite invite to get! You no longer wear diapers, but have graduated to 'pull ups' and can sit on the potty, even though you don't quite yet feel ready to do anything on it, you are ready to sit & wait. And if you can sit & wait, then I can too. Take your time baby, don't grow up too fast on Momma, ok? I still need to hear you sometimes say, "Momma, help pwease?" and if you don't mind, could you finish it off with "Wuv'oo Momma!"

Thanks baby girl... I love you to the moon & back and the sun & back and the stars & back,
and to China & back!

Always & Forever,

-Momma.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France