July 7, 2016

Dear Baby,

Right now as I type this I am sitting in your room on the chair watching you “try to fall asleep.” By that I mean pulling yourself up by the rails of your crib until you are standing and then peering over at me and laughing. Same same.

Up and down and up and down until you just basically exhaust yourself and pass out. 

And I can’t help but be in awe of your dedication and determination to just stand up and be adorable. Your tiny little arms shake with the big job of pulling yourself up and no matter how many times you fall down, you keep trying. 

Maybe the great reward is getting to bite on the crib- which you are doing right now or to be able to flash me a smile from over the top of the rails but I imagine the true reward is trying and succeeding to do something. 

You don’t yet know that you could give up. That you could employee someone else to do the job for you or the millions of excuses you could make to get out of doing it. All you know is that you want to stand up right now and you’ll be damned if it isn’t going to happen. 

And that right there is a thing we all begin to lose as we grow up. If I tried at anything the way you try to stand up, I would master it but “life” gets in the way of a lot of our tries. 

Watching you has actually been a huge inspiration and reminder that no task is too small or too hard if you just throw yourself into it and pull up as hard as you can. With a little strength you can accomplish anything. 

And that is a huge thing that I want you to know and remember. By the time you read this you will have long mastered standing and forgotten a time when you couldn’t but once upon a time you worked your butt off to make it happen. I hope you use that same drive to get everything you want out of life. 

In the meantime, let’s see you use that same drive to master putting yourself to sleep for your nap- mmmkay?

xo

Mom