Dear Eden

We celebrated your one-year birthday last weekend. I thought that your birthday itself might be really meaningful (we happened to be in Tucson on the actual day). It was a great day, but I didn't have any epiphanies, no big flashbacks to your birth, no melancholy moments. You toddled through your day, had a root beer float that Nona made for you. We played in the pool and played ball, blocks -- the whole nine yards.

This past week, though, it's been really, really hot. And this week all the memories of your birth have come flooding back. Daddy and I sat on the couch and looked through all your baby pictures. Every time I nurse you in the rocking chair I can almost remember how your tiny little baby body felt in my arms. And I find myself singing songs to you that I haven't sung since last summer.

You are my little summer baby. Every year when it's hot outside and we pull out the fans I will remember what it was like those first three months we spent together cocooned in our little home. When the sunsets are purple, orange and red and the clouds high and wispy in the sky (and towering over the mountains) I will remember the car ride to the hospital when we knew you were on the way. I'll remember your beautiful little newborn cry every time I hear Marc Johnson's Sound of Summer Running...all the wonderful days and nights we spent getting to know each other.

You've been really clingy this week; I'm nto sure why. I wonder if perhaps it is because you got used to me being home all day, every day, for two weeks, and now it's hard on you for me to go back to work. I wish I didn't have to be away from you every day at work. But I am glad that we have a good place to live, and that I have plenty of vacation so that I can come home often so we can be together.

I love you so much, little peanut. You little one-year-old, you!

Love,
Mom