It feels like yesterday when I first met you,
peering down over my still round yet quickly deflating belly, the same belly
that held you carefully for 9 months. My legs were raised in the stir ups as
Jan, our midwife, held you high so I could see your tiny arms and legs extending
for the very first time.
And all I could say was, “I love him so much!” –
my first words to you.
I never imagined having a little boy. Growing
up in a family where the estrogen ran high I was unsure of how I was going to
handle the nonstop energy of the opposite gender. Two years later I’m still
scratching my head trying to figure you out. You’re loud, you like to believe
you can jump from any height, you’re already talking about poop and calling
everyone “poop”, I’m finding rocks in the laundry that you’ve collected in your
pockets, and you always want to wrestle.
“You’re such a boy!” I yelled out one day after
you came inside covered in mud. As I stripped you down to your diaper at the
door I immediately contemplated how much Oxyclean solution I was going to have
to use in order to remove all the stains.
“You can’t say that like it’s a bad thing,”
your father called out to me from the other room.