One

Dear Little,

One year ago today I was strapped to an operating room table, your Daddy by my side. We were singing the Monkees theme song which seemed funny but not at all unreasonable at the time. It was truly the only thing that separated me from a complete terror-based mental break.

You see, the doctors? They were planning on cutting a human being out of my body. While I was awake. Then, then, they were going to hand that human being over to us to raise into a fine and decent person. Us. US.

You, however, were not the only person born into the Engel family that winter morning. Your father and I were born, too. The minute they showed us your face, mad and swollen and yellow and covered in some sort of film, we were born again. (Not in a Jesus way). We ceased at that moment to be the center of our own worlds. We no longer came first in anything. The only thing that mattered from the instant you took your first breath was that we were up to the task of raising you.

We could probably do better. Maybe you stay up too late some nights. Maybe you need a firmer nap schedule. Perhaps we shouldn’t get up with you every single time you wake up surly at 3am. Probably we should stop calling you an asshole to your face (but honestly darling, stop trying to hurl yourself out of the high chair because you will quite possibly succeed one day and then you will be pissed.) But please know that we truly and honestly do the very best that we can.

Happy birthday, Smalls. 100 more.

We love you,

Mommy & Daddy