​Baba, stop growing up so fast. The leaves are turning rusty and golden, curling and falling to the ground. Your second birthday is around the corner, and I feel myself drawing nearer to that little girl peeking out from behind the toddler.
 
You won’t remember these metamorphosis moments I’m privileged to witness, but I will. There are things I wish I could forget: your shrill shrieking and rigid tantrum poses spring to mind. Other memories are more meaningful; I press these into my heart carefully, like a leaf tucked inside a book.
 
They include things like how you always want to go into our “big bed” at night. Or the way your head bops in the back seat to Pharrell’s “Happy” song. That time you snuggled on my lap when I picked you up at Nana’s house. The moment you looked up at me from under your lashes, and simply said “Miss you, Mama.”
 
It’s true: you have lived in the world longer than you have lived in the womb. You have enough hair for a messy bun. You come up with new words out of nowhere, shocking me out of everyday stupor by saying things like “perfect” and “nightgown.”
 
Tall for your age with wise eyes that see into the heart of things, you know we’re talking about you even when we try to disguise it. People call you an old soul, and I sense the same. This isn’t the first life cycle we’ve been on together. Thank you for picking me to be your mother this time around. There is no higher honour.

​A tiny tyrant: that’s what you are. Adorable, but tyrannical. Not quite two, but a veteran tantrum-thrower since about 18 months. Last night you tossed a burger at Papa’s head. Everyone says you have a good arm. At least there were no condiments involved.
 
Meal times are a dreaded, dire time of day. You are a powder keg in your high chair, and anything can set you off. The wrong plate. Your sandwich falling apart. The fact that you are inside and not walking endlessly all over the neighbourhood. Nothing seems to satisfy your palette except some specially chosen foods: hash browns, deli meats, tuna, Nutella, the occasional piece of fruit. Each night is groundhog day and the refrain inevitably spirals into: “Cookies. Eve want. Eve want.”
 
It is enough to make me long for your liquid-diet days (the formula phase, not the breastfeeding blues).
 
And then Dora is not available after dinner, on demand, and it is a DISASTER. For everyone, not just you. Believe me, I felt like crying, too. I hadn’t realized how much I’d started to count on those sanity-saving, 23-minute increments.
 
But then one of those makes-it-all-worth-it moments happens later in the evening, and it forces me to take a step back and sit outside myself. I stop being the perpetually harried parent for a moment.
 
It is bedtime and I am counting down the minutes to me-time. I’m holding you in my arms and they are aching, but I push that aside. You’re wearing your fleece dinosaur sleeper and giving me big eyes because you know night-night is nigh. As I’m putting you in your crib, I lean close and whisper, “Mama loves you.” I mean it. Despite the toddler drama from dawn to dusk. And you lay your little freshly shampooed head on my shoulder and say, “Eve loves you, too.” And I think, man, I may be physically exhausted and mentally shattered, but that sentence right there ranks up amongst the best things I’ve ever heard. Period.

You are all the fallen eyelashes I have wished upon, blown from my fingers and straight into my heart. You light up the ventricles, overthrowing everything I once thought important. Each day I tuck away ticket-stub memories of our time together, absorbing the magic of your eyes, the imprint of everything holy.
 
The girl I secretly hoped for came true in you. As soon as you arrived, you were my absolute. All my lucid dreaming translated into something delicately fleeting. I know you are going to do life by yourself one day, but today you are just 22 months and still near me. 

​This growing up, bit by bit - I watch it and mark each milestone in my memory bank. That night you said “love you” for the first time from your crib. That day you insisted on walking down the stairs by yourself, holding the railing while I held my breath.
 
Sometimes when I’m with you, I flash forward into the future and try to imagine what you’ll be like. What our relationship will feel like. I wonder if being Scorpios will bring us closer and give us unique insight into each other’s hearts. I wonder what the universe has in store for you, what your path will be. But then I remember the future will take care of itself. And so I just hold you close, savouring the smell of your hair, marvelling at the words and phrases spilling out of your mouth. Thanking every higher power for the chance to love you.

​We saw your heart first, galloping along at 141 beats a minute. You were shaped like a shrimp, all big head and curved tail. The doctor said you were smaller than a peanut, so we couldn’t call you “peanut” yet. I didn’t have a name picked out for you besides Mango.
 
Now and then it still hits me: you are here, despite the obstacles of my body, the obstacles of my psyche. Years of scar tissue and surgeries and hot water bottles and painkillers melt away. You are HERE. I was able to make you.
 
But I didn’t leave it to chance. I kept Guatemalan health dolls in the medicine cabinet. I said a prayer every day. I stocked my own supplement pharmacy. I let a woman stick needles in me.
 
I started to believe you might be possible. One morning I woke up from a dream after you were conceived but before I found out I was pregnant, and I was telling someone “let go and let God.” It was only hours later that I realized I was probably talking to myself.
 
The morning we found out about you, I peed on a digital pregnancy stick and didn’t wait the full four minutes to check. Your Papa and I simply lay in bed, stunned. He cried, while I curled up in a state of happy shock. I kept that stick, and keep it still, even though the battery ran out and the screen is blank. The letters spell out YES, but all I see is HOPE.