There is a book called If I Could Keep You Little by Marianne Richmond (not an affiliate) that Olivia has that makes me cry everytime I read it. It’s not the first one to do this to me. Because this has been a year of tremendous growth in my little girl and she’s no longer that little baby I wished for. Oh, of course, she remains to be cherished. But now she’s a toddler. She’s a little kid with her own (hilarious) personality and is speaking in six-word sentences and actually has hair.
Which you can’t see here, because she’s also a psycho toddler who doesn’t want to cooperate for photos anymore.
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I’m caught between wanting her as she is and missing dearly that pudgy little baby body that used to sleep on my chest. I mean, look at how much she’s changed:
But like the book says, if I could keep her little I could hold and snuggle her all day, I would miss out on this.
The way she puts her hand on my shoulder, stares Very Seriously into my eyes and says, “Sorry, Mamo.” And then bursts out laughing.
The way she runs down the hallway shouting, “I wide! Spear!” (I ride Spirit—the horse from the Netflix show)
The way she kisses me on the cheek or lips.
The way she goes in and out of preferences: from Frozen to Minnie, to “Maow!” (Maui, from Moana)
The way her Minnie lovey is like her little friend, and she needs to eat with us, jump on the bed with Olivia, and every night her Minnie and Bear lovies need a kiss (but Bear still isn’t allowed back to sleep with her for some reason—he lays on her night table.
The way she eats tacos and chicken noodle soup and berries like nobodies business.
She may not take a good photo for her transferversary, but that’s because she’s too busy making me laugh 45 times a day.
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I had no idea what to expect three years ago in the waiting room of the surgical suite, decked out in scrubs and crapping my pants from terror, awaiting the news of how many embryos made it to transfer—
—but I never could have fathomed this.
Happy transferversary, my darling. Someday you will understand what that photo of microscopic embryos means.
