Dearest Toby,
Today you are nine.
Nine.
NEIN!!!!
Nine - Danke! Might
make you think I'm saying “Thanks for a Great 9 years” …but it ALSO means NO THANK you in
German. I think BOTH are appropriate
right now.
Lets start with the positive -- Thanks for 9 great years! How thankful I am that 9 years ago you made
me a mother; you changed my life forever, teaching me lessons I never knew
before about true love and true fear.
While I had selfishly spent the first 30 years of my life focusing on me
and med school and marrying daddy and making friends and buying a home,
suddenly you threw yourself into the direct flight path of my life, announcing,
“AHA! Here I am! Something that means more to you than
anything you have ever encountered before!” As my love for you exploded
exponentially those first few days I grew to realize that the track of success
I felt my life might be on could suddenly be derailed instantaneously by
anything ever happening to you.
And, just to drive home the point, you gave me a brief taste
of what that terror might feel like when you were 10 months old and tried to
die on us.
Thanks again for that, Toby.
You have always been quite fastidious about driving your point home.
So sure…I could look back and say, “Nein, Danke” to all of
that. But I won’t. Because it brought
you to me and me to you. And it brought
us all to where we are right now…which…ahem…. is where I’d like to put a halt
on things....
NEIN DANKE to this sudden desire to grow your hair like a
teenager, half covering your eyes (and the other half miraculously defying
gravity with the interestingly placed cow-licks brought to you, lovingly, from
your Henry family…)
NEIN DANKE to this new phase of showering and dressing
yourself without my input. For goodness
sakes, you don’t even seem to need me in the change room after hockey practice
but prefer that I wait for you “outside with the other parents” while you
change yourself.
TOBY HENRY…might I remind you that up until a year ago you
could not pick out your own SOCKS without your mother’s help! You gotta rip the band-aid off slowly, buddy…
NEIN DANKE to sleep overs.
I know you PRETEND to be old enough and big enough to be able to fall
asleep without our good night snuggles and without needing to see me for 12
hours in a row…. It all seems quite unnatural and uncomfortable for ME so I can
only imagine how hard it must be for you…
And NEIN DANKE to all these new technological things you
have become so fantastic at. You were on
a select Robotics team this year and exceled beyond your parents wildest
expectations. I thought robotics was a
club that built robots (Duh) but as it turns out you somehow have learned to
code and create programs that move robots and command them to do things. It’s a scary skill set that goes beyond mine
and has me worried that one day my coffee maker is going to start revolting and
making YOU chocolate milk in the morning.
Nine!!!! Danke, Toby…for
being Nine and for being Mine. I’ll
enjoy it all while I can!
Xo Mommy
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