My Tiny Mia,
Early sunlight filtered through the blinds, its gauzy rays spreading over the thin hospital sheets in the wallpapered room. The masked doctor held you up – a slick, pink baby, your legs kicking, trying to cry.


That sunlight has followed you for the last year, casting a fizzy brilliance over our lives.
I sing you a lullaby: “You’re a slice of heaven, you’re a bit of a dream, and everyone who sees you knows just what I mean.”
They all say, “Look at those eyes,” and start to look away. Then you scrunch your nose and open up a smile and they can’t turn from you, wanting to stay near your bubbly warmth. On two occasions, shoppers followed us through the grocery store for several aisles.
You are a delight – a good-natured, independent baby who can’t get enough of this wonderful world. We visited our friends’ farm last week, a blue on green expanse of horses, cows, fences and clouds, and you had little interest in anything but the gravel road.
You picked up the chalky rocks two at a time, banged them together and threw them, then turned them over in your hands and put the smallest ones to your lips.
“Ah, ah, baby girl,” I said, warning you. You squinted your eyes, your in-trouble expression, and lowered the gravel into your lap.
Give you a room in a new house to explore, a park to ramble or anything non-edible to chew on, and you’re happy.

You also like danger; barbed wire fences and dark, crowded garages entice you. You would love to dive into the neighborhood pool and start swimming right now (you’re not so thrilled about sitting on Mama’s hip in the water).
At 23 and pregnant, I thought I was young. At 25 and pregnant, I thought I was crazy. Two babies under age two?
I wasn’t terrified of you so much as the two of you: sisters. And you are a formidable force, particularly now that you’ve started holding hands and actually sharing a toy on occasion.
Yesterday Sasha announced to me that you were her best baby, her tiny little sister who was “so soft and fantastic.” And then she said, “Mia is my best friend.” She patted your head. You looked up at her, grinned and hurried away – half-waddling, half-running.

I can feel nothing but joy.
The first time the two of you ask for something (i.e. gang up on me), I believe I may physically turn to Play-Doh.
Roundly pregnant with you last spring, I tried in vain to rely on my usual refuge: research. Nothing seemed appropriate. The books I loved during my first pregnancy – Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions and Dr. Sears’ Attachment Parenting Book – seemed to make sense only for one child. Books about siblings applied to school-age children or teenagers.
Instead, I relied on instinct. I rubbed my belly, giggled at your kicks and said, “Que sera sera.”
It has been my mantra. I repeated it as you writhed and screamed through the first four months of life. I repeated it as you busted through all of my expectations of how a baby should act (all erroneously based on Sasha’s actions) and made your own way, refusing to read books, running toward – not away from – pets, and sharing smiles and snuggles with anyone in the room. And I repeated it this morning as you howled to be lifted from the high chair while Sasha tantrumed on the bathroom floor.

There are lots of things that make me want to cry about your first year: I left you in your crib five minutes longer so that I could get dressed, or did puzzle after puzzle with Sasha in my lap while you entertained yourself with a teething toy next to us. The play-by-play narration of our lives usually revolved around your sister’s actions – or didn’t happen at all when I felt exhausted. I handed you off to Daddy, Nana, Papa or Carli so I could work a few hours every week.
But the same things make me happy: I was brave enough to trust that you’d take what you needed out of our daily narrative and I watched as you glommed onto the silly and the textured, chased the challenging and sought out the loud. You climbed stairs before you could walk, sifted sand through your fingers and ran after puppies. Instead of forever leading and holding on, I often followed you – or let you roam as I watched over you. I was secure enough in our love to allow you to love other people, and to know that the ways they loved you weren’t worse than my own, and could only benefit you.
I will always teach and protect you. More than that, Mia, I will be strong enough to let you protect yourself and learn in your own way.

Three years ago, it would have seemed strange to me that a baby could teach herself things but now it seems obvious. You jump on the trampoline, clap along with music and kiss yourself in the mirror. You point at birds, climb up slides and race through sprinklers. Heaven is being naked and digging in the backyard dirt or having whatever toy you sister just had.
As you rustled and punched inside me, I worried my heart could not fit something so immense as another person. I fretted that life would never be the same.
The latter is true.
My heart bulged and stretched, metamorphosing like a tadpole to a frog, but everything else is different.
I learned to play zone, strapping you to my chest and hoisting your sister in the shopping cart and handing a cracker to each of you simultaneously while driving. Daddy learned to bathe two.
I dream of the fast pitter-patter of your tiny feet chasing the weighty bu-bump of your sisters' around the couch.

You have made me another kind of mother, transformed Sasha into a sister, turned our trio into a crew and cast the world in your own brand of sunlight.
I am forever thankful to be your mother.
Love you as bright as the morning,
Mama
