I’ll love you until pigs freeze over.

Each morning, I peek in your room to ensure you’re considering thinking about what it might take to will yourself out of bed. You’re usually already awake, perusing Reddit or snuggling your cat, which is never surprising because your Dad and I hit the kid lottery for sleep. An image of the morning after you began sleeping through the night, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3ish months old, forever etched into my memory – opening my eyes to sunlight, an unusual sight for a new mom of twins, turning to your father, and seeing his disheveled concern, nervously clutching the baby monitor, white knuckled, held up to his ear, carefully listening for signs of life. From that day on, hardly demonstrating FOMO or any interest in burning the midnight oil, you usher yourself to bed without much fanfare.

In stark contrast, your arrival into the world sent shockwaves that reverberate, still.

You and your twin sister landed a bit head of schedule, and while the gruesome details remain unimportant, you entered this world teaching me my first of many lessons in motherhood; sometimes immeasurable beauty lies just on the other side of pain and fear. You blossomed into a roly-poly mop of blonde curls, icy blue eyes, and so… much…energy. All of it, honestly. Case in point, you never walked. You commando crawled, then came the more traditional crawl, then, upon witnessing your cousin run down the hallway, you steadied yourself up on your feet, threw all of your 18 month old caution to the wind, and took off in a blur of Garanimals and giggles.

Another lesson learned that day; when in doubt, always take the next, small step. Or five. Quickly, and in the direction of those you love.

We never expected preschool to prove as challenging as it did for you, and that early experience still regretfully plagues my Momma-heart all these years later. Never did we imagine how overwhelming the input of a classroom of rowdy three year olds would be on your sensory system until we got THE call. The fear and anxiety proved too much and, in an act of desperation to control your environment, you took a swing at your teacher. The sobbing bellow coming from you, behind a locked bathroom door, nearly wrecked me then and the mere thought still activates an instinctual response to GO TO YOU. To rescue that little boy and hold him, as tightly as I can, until your howls and weeping stop and you fall asleep in an exhausted heap, in my arms. That day was both the worst and the start of a new, exciting adventure with teachers and professionals who more than understood you as a diagnosis, but adored you like one of their own. A different tree, but family nonetheless.

To them, I am forever grateful because they gave me you. The real you.

I often tell people it’s easy to love your kids, because it is. But, do you like them? Would you choose to spend time with your children if they belonged to someone else? Maybe most parents would, but that’s always stood as my yardstick for my success in parenting. Sure, part of the job is to prepare you for entry into society as a law abiding, productive adult. I’d argue that’s the smallest part of parenting. Say please, thank you, hold doors, pick up your trash, pay your bills, and your taxes, and keep your hands to yourself. I think we’ve pretty much got that part down.

Recently, I made some monumental changes in my professional life that allow me to focus on shoring up my physical, emotional, and mental health. A pleasant side-effect of such a shift permits me to spend more quality time with you and your sister. I relish the insights born from chats on our car rides to and from school, the steady stream of astonishment over acuity and wisdom you demonstrate far beyond your years. To wit, someone asked you if you even knew what a fax machine was, the comment dripped with sarcasm and certainty that you did not. Your response? “Yeah. It’s like a copy machine. But it copies…(pointing your finger in a far off direction) over there.” If the IOC included sarcasm as an Olympic sport, you’d live atop the medal podium, most decorated in gold.

How proud I was to see you put someone in his place.

Mostly, because that’s so unlike you. You defer. To your sister, to the group, to the family, hell…you often defer to the cat and dog so as not to upset their apple carts. You love so deeply, with an empathetic heart and a clever, kind soul. The mere thought of someone taking offense to your jokes causes a disturbance in your force. Suggesting you disappointed anyone sends you reeling for days. While I acknowledge winning at this parenting thing and raising a conscientious, kind, self-aware, tolerant feminist, I admittedly get low marks for not yet teaching you the value of self care and the need to sometimes disappoint the people you love the most when it means prioritizing yourself. I promise to work on that, post haste.

The other morning, we cracked the fuck up over some Reddit thread you found that mixed idioms and metaphors and created new ones, like “you opened this can of worms, now lie in it” and my personal favorite, “we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.” After thinking about it, these “malaphors” resemble a verbal Picasso masterpiece. Sure, the overarching idea of the subject is understood, but Sir Pablo’s journey to achieving that portrait meandered and twisted through some pretty interesting turns. Your childhood and path to being an adult resembles something similar. Seriously, raising you took a whole village held together with popsicle sticks and duct tape and glue and prayers, and burned to the ground a few times from an errant lightning strike, but we rebuilt and are still on track to arrive at our beautiful, priceless destination.