Letter to Noelle @ 21 Months
Lots and lots of updates going on in my head, including a more detailed announcement about the birth of my brand new nephew, Basil (pronounced Bazzil) Mohammed El-Soury, 9 LBS 12. OZ 231/2", delivered via COMPLETELY NATURAL CHILDBIRTH, but I'll wait on that until I have pictures!
For now, my quarterly letter to Noelle.
November 22, 2009
Dear Noelle,
To my beautiful sweet daughter...
I can no longer deny it, my little love, you are more of a child than you are a baby. Your fine blonde hair reaches to your shoulder blades, your features have become distinct and child-like, your wide blue eyes flash with curiosity and focus with determination, you weigh 25 lbs. and are almost three feet tall. Nevertheless, you will always be my baby. It is a cliché that has passed through the lips of mothers across the world for a long, long, time, but it is unequivocally true. Even as I watch you dexterously run through the house and climb upon the playground equipment, or listen to you speak in full sentences to tell me precisely what you want, I see not only the lovely little lady you have become, but also the tiny infant who I protectively held naked to my chest on the day you were born. Each day that you grow, so does my love for you. Your baby days cannot be replaced by my new experiences with you; instead each new minute of your life adds incrementally to the place you hold in my heart, and this love that is expanding so rapidly physically fills me up with a feeling that just can’t possibly be explained, though that won’t keep me from telling you how very much you are loved. You’ve changed me and you’ve changed my life, Noelle Donnalee.
These past few months have been an absolute whirlwind. On September 11th I started a 60 day internship at Mars Middle School library to fulfill a requirement to earn my Masters of Library Sciences, which will allow me to pursue a career as a school librarian. This experience has been both amazing and torturous. In the school library I feel that I am doing what God put me on this Earth to do, yet at the same time, when I leave you angelically sleeping in your cozy bed, I also feel that I am walking away from what God put me on this Earth to do. Again, I find myself lost for words to truly explain the paradox that rages in my heart and mind; I wonder, do I do more for you by pursuing a life’s work that is meaningful and valuable to me, or by staying with you to care for you and personally fill you with knowledge and teach you life’s lessons? You see, my sweet pea, it always comes back to what is best for you. It is surely a universal mother’s dilemma and if the time comes that you must make this choice, know that there is no right answer, you can only do what feels right in your heart. While I abhor missing a single precious minute with you, I take comfort knowing that this time has allowed you to bond with so many special people in your life. When I am teaching in the school library, you are alternatively tended to by your Oma, Opa, Gramma, Daddy and Uncle Steve. Each of them feels as passionately about you as I do, and when I come through the door in the afternoon, after you greet me with an ecstatic smile, leap into my arms for a hug, and exuberantly yell, “Mommy’s back!” your relatives brighten my day with hilarious and heart-melting stories of the day’s activities.
Oh the adventures you have, Noelle! What wonderful, happy days. Much to my delight, you love books and reading. Each day you find a new favorite book that must be read over and over and over and over again. Right now, your favorites are “Maisy’s Bear” and “Where’s Spot?” but tomorrow you may change your preference. You love to cuddle up in your nursery chair or on your bed in the crook of the arm of someone who loves you and flip the pages of your favorite stories. If no one is available to read to you, you are quite content to read them to yourself, reciting the stories aloud from your astute memory. Of considerable interest to you right now are all things with wheels. Forgive my gender-stereotype, but when I found out that I would be giving birth to a baby girl, I did not envision the colossal fleet of miniature plastic vehicles that are now parked all about our house…airplanes and trucks and cars and bulldozers and tractors and buses. There is a schedule, created by your Gramma that has taken up permanent residence on our kitchen counter to alert your caregivers as to when the life-size school buses, mail truck and garbage trucks will be passing by our home. Your Gramma has gone as far as to take you to construction sites during the day, and you stare in rapt attention as the bulldozers and other earth-movers shuffle their dirt loads. (God have mercy on the adult who mistakes a backhoe for a bulldozer in your presence!) Marcia, the mail-lady, and Edmund, her occasional substitute, are household names in our home and your shrewd eye does not miss a single “Fed-Ex!” or “PS!” (UPS) truck that passes us by on the road. When your nose is neither in a book, nor pressed against the window watching for the school bus to turn the corner, you also love to color and draw, dance to your diverse CD collection, dotingly tend to your dolls, stuffed animals and Little People toys (all distinctively named), and explore your neighborhood on foot, collecting outdoor treasures and making new friends. Hide and Seek is another favorite game. As we “look for you,” asking, “Is Noelle under the bed?” and such, you call out in a sing-sing voice, “Noooooooooooooo,” completely blowing your cover and making us laugh out loud.
On October 31st, you had the opportunity to take a special trip through the neighborhood for Halloween, trick-or-treating for the first time. You were such a good sport about the whole crazy matter, Noelle, sporting an awkward but adorable peacock costume whose tail was as wide as you are tall. I suspect you’ll look back and wonder why I would dress you in such a ridiculous outfit, but honestly you were beyond precious, a real favorite to every adult who saw you waddling their way in your orange tights clasping your pumpkin tote. You faithfully trooped through the entire neighborhood, collecting Kit-Kats whenever possible. You really enjoyed all of the glowing Jack O’ Lanterns at each house, and were particularly excited about an enormous inflatable Halloween decoration of three pumpkins with a black cat periodically popping up from inside the top pumpkin. As part of our new Halloween tradition, we also accompanied Ella and her Mom and Dad to Zoo Boo at the Pittsburgh Zoo, where you both stole everyone’s hearts, walking hand in hand, a fuzzy blue peacock and a yellow-tutu’ed bumble bee.
Most notably over the past months, however, is the absolute explosion in your language development. Having grown accustomed to interpreting your grunts and coos and babbles, it virtually blows my mind that you can now articulate so clearly what you want, observe, feel and remember. You regularly speak in 2-4 word sentences and your vocabulary amazes me. You can label almost anything in your house, environment and books, and you only need to be told the name of something or someone once to be able to recall its name. Since 18 months old, you’ve been able to properly identify all of the colors of the rainbow, even distinguishing between pinks and purples and black and gray and silver. The only time you stumble is sometimes confusing white and black, which are drastically different to adults, but I suspect you simply see both as an absence of the other vibrant colors you know so well. This is just another example of how viewing the world from your perspective allows me to see what I once took for granted with fresh, appreciative eyes.
Until next time…Be kind, be yourself and count your blessings.
Love you always,
Mom
For now, my quarterly letter to Noelle.
November 22, 2009
Dear Noelle,
To my beautiful sweet daughter...
I can no longer deny it, my little love, you are more of a child than you are a baby. Your fine blonde hair reaches to your shoulder blades, your features have become distinct and child-like, your wide blue eyes flash with curiosity and focus with determination, you weigh 25 lbs. and are almost three feet tall. Nevertheless, you will always be my baby. It is a cliché that has passed through the lips of mothers across the world for a long, long, time, but it is unequivocally true. Even as I watch you dexterously run through the house and climb upon the playground equipment, or listen to you speak in full sentences to tell me precisely what you want, I see not only the lovely little lady you have become, but also the tiny infant who I protectively held naked to my chest on the day you were born. Each day that you grow, so does my love for you. Your baby days cannot be replaced by my new experiences with you; instead each new minute of your life adds incrementally to the place you hold in my heart, and this love that is expanding so rapidly physically fills me up with a feeling that just can’t possibly be explained, though that won’t keep me from telling you how very much you are loved. You’ve changed me and you’ve changed my life, Noelle Donnalee.
These past few months have been an absolute whirlwind. On September 11th I started a 60 day internship at Mars Middle School library to fulfill a requirement to earn my Masters of Library Sciences, which will allow me to pursue a career as a school librarian. This experience has been both amazing and torturous. In the school library I feel that I am doing what God put me on this Earth to do, yet at the same time, when I leave you angelically sleeping in your cozy bed, I also feel that I am walking away from what God put me on this Earth to do. Again, I find myself lost for words to truly explain the paradox that rages in my heart and mind; I wonder, do I do more for you by pursuing a life’s work that is meaningful and valuable to me, or by staying with you to care for you and personally fill you with knowledge and teach you life’s lessons? You see, my sweet pea, it always comes back to what is best for you. It is surely a universal mother’s dilemma and if the time comes that you must make this choice, know that there is no right answer, you can only do what feels right in your heart. While I abhor missing a single precious minute with you, I take comfort knowing that this time has allowed you to bond with so many special people in your life. When I am teaching in the school library, you are alternatively tended to by your Oma, Opa, Gramma, Daddy and Uncle Steve. Each of them feels as passionately about you as I do, and when I come through the door in the afternoon, after you greet me with an ecstatic smile, leap into my arms for a hug, and exuberantly yell, “Mommy’s back!” your relatives brighten my day with hilarious and heart-melting stories of the day’s activities.
Oh the adventures you have, Noelle! What wonderful, happy days. Much to my delight, you love books and reading. Each day you find a new favorite book that must be read over and over and over and over again. Right now, your favorites are “Maisy’s Bear” and “Where’s Spot?” but tomorrow you may change your preference. You love to cuddle up in your nursery chair or on your bed in the crook of the arm of someone who loves you and flip the pages of your favorite stories. If no one is available to read to you, you are quite content to read them to yourself, reciting the stories aloud from your astute memory. Of considerable interest to you right now are all things with wheels. Forgive my gender-stereotype, but when I found out that I would be giving birth to a baby girl, I did not envision the colossal fleet of miniature plastic vehicles that are now parked all about our house…airplanes and trucks and cars and bulldozers and tractors and buses. There is a schedule, created by your Gramma that has taken up permanent residence on our kitchen counter to alert your caregivers as to when the life-size school buses, mail truck and garbage trucks will be passing by our home. Your Gramma has gone as far as to take you to construction sites during the day, and you stare in rapt attention as the bulldozers and other earth-movers shuffle their dirt loads. (God have mercy on the adult who mistakes a backhoe for a bulldozer in your presence!) Marcia, the mail-lady, and Edmund, her occasional substitute, are household names in our home and your shrewd eye does not miss a single “Fed-Ex!” or “PS!” (UPS) truck that passes us by on the road. When your nose is neither in a book, nor pressed against the window watching for the school bus to turn the corner, you also love to color and draw, dance to your diverse CD collection, dotingly tend to your dolls, stuffed animals and Little People toys (all distinctively named), and explore your neighborhood on foot, collecting outdoor treasures and making new friends. Hide and Seek is another favorite game. As we “look for you,” asking, “Is Noelle under the bed?” and such, you call out in a sing-sing voice, “Noooooooooooooo,” completely blowing your cover and making us laugh out loud.
On October 31st, you had the opportunity to take a special trip through the neighborhood for Halloween, trick-or-treating for the first time. You were such a good sport about the whole crazy matter, Noelle, sporting an awkward but adorable peacock costume whose tail was as wide as you are tall. I suspect you’ll look back and wonder why I would dress you in such a ridiculous outfit, but honestly you were beyond precious, a real favorite to every adult who saw you waddling their way in your orange tights clasping your pumpkin tote. You faithfully trooped through the entire neighborhood, collecting Kit-Kats whenever possible. You really enjoyed all of the glowing Jack O’ Lanterns at each house, and were particularly excited about an enormous inflatable Halloween decoration of three pumpkins with a black cat periodically popping up from inside the top pumpkin. As part of our new Halloween tradition, we also accompanied Ella and her Mom and Dad to Zoo Boo at the Pittsburgh Zoo, where you both stole everyone’s hearts, walking hand in hand, a fuzzy blue peacock and a yellow-tutu’ed bumble bee.
Most notably over the past months, however, is the absolute explosion in your language development. Having grown accustomed to interpreting your grunts and coos and babbles, it virtually blows my mind that you can now articulate so clearly what you want, observe, feel and remember. You regularly speak in 2-4 word sentences and your vocabulary amazes me. You can label almost anything in your house, environment and books, and you only need to be told the name of something or someone once to be able to recall its name. Since 18 months old, you’ve been able to properly identify all of the colors of the rainbow, even distinguishing between pinks and purples and black and gray and silver. The only time you stumble is sometimes confusing white and black, which are drastically different to adults, but I suspect you simply see both as an absence of the other vibrant colors you know so well. This is just another example of how viewing the world from your perspective allows me to see what I once took for granted with fresh, appreciative eyes.
Until next time…Be kind, be yourself and count your blessings.
Love you always,
Mom