Happy 2nd Birthday, Bess!
My youngest niece turns 2 on Thursday. 2 is of course very young, but it seems like she's growing up super fast. Here are some reflections from the past year.
Sometime in the past year, your family started calling you "Knucklehead." At first I thought that was a little harsh -- you're just a baby! -- but then I witnessed some incidents that sold me on the nickname. Hey, would you rather be Tooter MacGruter? 'Cause that's me. You'll probably grow out of "Knucklehead" eventually, but I'm 30 years old and your dad and Uncle A STILL call me Grute. So how is it that you're such a knucklehead? Some people would call it persistence, but you have an amazing ability to ignore lessons from times you've hurt yourself. You are my niece most likely to spend time in a full body cast, but for now you just give yourself a lot of bumps and bruises. I have watched you climb up on things, fall off, and climb back up again repeatedly. You don't get discouraged -- maybe your ability to push on through frustrations will lead you to make great scientific discoveries. Or maybe you'll just break every bone in your body. Possibly both of these things. I have faith in you. I have also watched you walk face first right into solid objects. You're fearless, I'll give you that!
My favorite knucklehead moment was when I was visiting you at your house just last month. We were hanging out in your room, and you grabbed a bucket of books and dumped it out, and then dove head first into the bucket. Then you got yourself stuck face down in this bucket with your legs kicking in the air, and you couldn't get yourself upright. I asked you if you were stuck or if you wanted help while I watched you kick at the air, and you insisted that you were not stuck and did not need help. After a couple minutes of flailing, you got yourself back on your feet. Good job, Knucklehead.
I don't have many good pictures of you from this past year because you are always in motion. Every picture I take is blurry because you won't sit still. You do know that you're supposed to say "cheese!" though, and any time I point my phone at you to take a picture, you grin and shout "tseeeezsh!" but you don't really look at the camera or stop moving even a little bit. You take after your older sister Lucy with your hair growing wildly in every direction. You follow your sister Frankie around a lot, and even though she sometimes complains that "BESS IS RUINING IT!" whatever "it" is, she loves you very much.
You're very mobile and adventurous, as we've already covered, and you're getting more vocal every day. One of the cutest things you do is refer to animals by the sounds they make. Monkeys are ee-oo-aah-aahs, and horses are yee-haws. It's precious and I hope you never grow out of this.
One of your more inexplicable traits is your love of elbows. Frankie has her shiny blanket, but you're not one for a security blanket. When you need comfort, you like to grab someone's elbows and squish the elbow skin around in your little hands. Apparently your mom did this when she was a kid, too. When you bonked your head on your dining room table, you cried loudly until your dad presented his elbow to you and told you to "go nuts." You started squeezing his elbow and calmed down almost immediately. It's like elbows put you in a trance. It's bizarre, but really adorable. On my last visit to Brooklyn, you started playing with my elbows, too. It felt like a rite of passage. I've never felt so honored to have someone want to play with my elbows before! I know that sounds silly, but one day you'll understand how great it feels to know that your niece feels safe with you. I love that you're old enough now that you know me a little bit, and you accept me as part of your family. When you're older, it will be a given -- of COURSE we're family, I'm your aunt! But you're too young now to understand exactly how I fit into your life, so it's pretty cool that you let me have my spot in your family, even though you don't get it yet.
This is about as still as you get.
I love you like crazy, Knucklehead. Happy birthday!
Sometime in the past year, your family started calling you "Knucklehead." At first I thought that was a little harsh -- you're just a baby! -- but then I witnessed some incidents that sold me on the nickname. Hey, would you rather be Tooter MacGruter? 'Cause that's me. You'll probably grow out of "Knucklehead" eventually, but I'm 30 years old and your dad and Uncle A STILL call me Grute. So how is it that you're such a knucklehead? Some people would call it persistence, but you have an amazing ability to ignore lessons from times you've hurt yourself. You are my niece most likely to spend time in a full body cast, but for now you just give yourself a lot of bumps and bruises. I have watched you climb up on things, fall off, and climb back up again repeatedly. You don't get discouraged -- maybe your ability to push on through frustrations will lead you to make great scientific discoveries. Or maybe you'll just break every bone in your body. Possibly both of these things. I have faith in you. I have also watched you walk face first right into solid objects. You're fearless, I'll give you that!
My favorite knucklehead moment was when I was visiting you at your house just last month. We were hanging out in your room, and you grabbed a bucket of books and dumped it out, and then dove head first into the bucket. Then you got yourself stuck face down in this bucket with your legs kicking in the air, and you couldn't get yourself upright. I asked you if you were stuck or if you wanted help while I watched you kick at the air, and you insisted that you were not stuck and did not need help. After a couple minutes of flailing, you got yourself back on your feet. Good job, Knucklehead.
I don't have many good pictures of you from this past year because you are always in motion. Every picture I take is blurry because you won't sit still. You do know that you're supposed to say "cheese!" though, and any time I point my phone at you to take a picture, you grin and shout "tseeeezsh!" but you don't really look at the camera or stop moving even a little bit. You take after your older sister Lucy with your hair growing wildly in every direction. You follow your sister Frankie around a lot, and even though she sometimes complains that "BESS IS RUINING IT!" whatever "it" is, she loves you very much.
You're very mobile and adventurous, as we've already covered, and you're getting more vocal every day. One of the cutest things you do is refer to animals by the sounds they make. Monkeys are ee-oo-aah-aahs, and horses are yee-haws. It's precious and I hope you never grow out of this.
One of your more inexplicable traits is your love of elbows. Frankie has her shiny blanket, but you're not one for a security blanket. When you need comfort, you like to grab someone's elbows and squish the elbow skin around in your little hands. Apparently your mom did this when she was a kid, too. When you bonked your head on your dining room table, you cried loudly until your dad presented his elbow to you and told you to "go nuts." You started squeezing his elbow and calmed down almost immediately. It's like elbows put you in a trance. It's bizarre, but really adorable. On my last visit to Brooklyn, you started playing with my elbows, too. It felt like a rite of passage. I've never felt so honored to have someone want to play with my elbows before! I know that sounds silly, but one day you'll understand how great it feels to know that your niece feels safe with you. I love that you're old enough now that you know me a little bit, and you accept me as part of your family. When you're older, it will be a given -- of COURSE we're family, I'm your aunt! But you're too young now to understand exactly how I fit into your life, so it's pretty cool that you let me have my spot in your family, even though you don't get it yet.
This is about as still as you get.
I love you like crazy, Knucklehead. Happy birthday!