P.S. Someone in our neighbourhood has clearly discovered the true nature of Space-Time and altered it, because I know for a fact that it is not Dec 22 2005. No. Yesterday was Dec 21 2004, and thus today is Dec 22 2004, and you are therefore one year old. Just one. Got it? Good. You're such a smart girl, I knew you would understand.

P.P.S. Yes, I know you are walking, and talking, and counting, and naming colours and shapes and people and everything else. Stop it. It's not appropriate for a one year old.

P.P.P.S Are you really really going to break my heart and turn two years old today?

Two? Whole? Years?

Where did it go? How did it get there? Can I get it back?

Your first year was fast enough, but this year feels as if I've been standing still while you raced by me at supersonic speeds, and I can barely glimpse you off ahead in the distance. You are so grown up, such a big girl, but I am only a baby and I am not ready. I am not ready for you to be running and playing and making friends, and picking out your own outfits, and determining what you would like to do with your time. Because it means you are getting ready to start moving away from me. And I ask you:

How, how how how, am I supposed to stand it when this beautiful little person starts moving away from me?

Right now you are snuggly and want hugs and kisses from Mummy. You will sit in my lap and happily read board book after board book; you will request endless squeaky repetitions of Snuggle Puppy and Twinkle Twinkle and ABC and You Are My Sunshine, and stare at me with big blue eyes bright and full of love. You will stroke my arm with your warm, tiny, impossibly soft little hand, and kiss me on the cheek, and let me kiss your owwies better. I treasure this. It isn't always easy, no, but you are the sweetest and easiest child who ever lived, and I have no right to complain. You don't always want me, but you want me an awful lot, and I can see this stage of your life racing by me at breakneck speed and I just can't stand it.

This might mean that I am a sap. I can take that.

I've even started calling you a toddler--and just in time, as you've perfected your sprint in order to chase Roxie around the house while screaming after her in your multi-pitched I-swear-I'm-not-possessed way, which sounds exactly like the obnoxious typing perfected by teenaged girls everywhere: "rOxie! come BAck hERe! ROXie! roXIE cat!" Until she is so bug-eyed and puff-tailed and freaked out that we can hear her back claws skittering on the bedroom ceiling. You even hunt her down to her last hiding place--in her cat carrier, for the love of god, which she used to hate--and lie prone in front of it, staring at her, grinning, and shrieking: "ROXie! roxie CAT! rOXie! roxiEEEEE!"

Can I ask you why a bunnyrabbit is now a "BUNNyRAAAAAAAbit"?

It's fine. No it is, really; your voice is soft and high enough that it doesn't grate, as it will in exactly 2.5 months. I blame your father, as he encourages you shamelessly: "Is that a BUNNyRAAAAAbit, Frances?" How are you supposed to know?

I like it much better when you find something you like, and your voice goes even softer and higher, and you practically purr at the object of your attention: "oooohthatscuuuuute, cuuuutebunny, cuuuuute." The other day, for instance, you asked for the empty benillyn box to play with, and when you had it, you stared at it and said, in a soft high voice, "Look at that! Look at that! Oooooh. Beaaauuutiful box."

Do you realize we've never babyproofed?

I wish you had told us we needn't bother, that the garbage cans and pots and pans were safe, before your father drilled a hole through the kitchen cupboards while trying to install those kid-safe magnet-lock thingamajigs. The hole remains, we've never put in anything else, and you never, ever open that door, unless we ask you to throw something in the garbage. It's amazing. It's mind-blowing, really, and just another piece of undeserved good fortune on my part. You just stay out of things! We even keep the big blue recycling bin--open and uncovered--in the kitchen, and while you have been known to carry off bits of paper and pop cans, we've never found it tilted onto its side with its contents strewn over the hardwood--we've only had to tell you to keep out of it a dozen times--and you've even decided that it's more fun to put things in it than take things out of it, so if I give you an empty pop can you'll carry it over to the recycling and put it inside, and stare at it, and tell us about how you put it in the recycling, and then we tell you how helpful you are, and you come back looking for another one.

I think the daycare should be paying us to have you.

You like to hug our knees. Especially in the morning when we're getting dressed; it's your little way of telling us you want us to slow down, give you a hug, and maybe call in sick. You always get your hug, damn you, even when I'm already twenty minutes late; I have no powers against a small, soft, fuzzy blond girl with two arms wrapped tightly around my legs. And besides, if I don't pick you up, you'll trip me.

You are beautiful.

And it's not just me, either; everywhere we go, people tell me so. But you are never more beautiful than when we are at home, and you are in your jammies on my lap, and ask me to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider while you do the hand movements. The tiny fingers squirm in front, fly up and down, wash out to the side, spread wide, and wriggle again, all more or less perfectly. You know the words, but never sing them; sometimes you'll recite them.

You know your shapes. You know your colours. You know the letters of the alphabet and can recite the ABC song. You use full sentences most of the time, and almost all the verbs and nouns you need, you have. Pronouns, though, are a sticking point. Specifically, "I." "I", apparently, refers to anyone. It might be you. It might be me. It might be Daddy. It might be the cat. Sometimes we don't know who it means.

"I play upstairs now," means you--Frances--are going upstairs to play.

"I draw circle," sometimes means that you are going to draw a circle, and sometimes means that you want us to draw a circle.

"I draw person/happy face/truck/tree/etc." means that you want us to draw it for you. Plagiarist.

"I play with Elmo" usually means that you want us to play with Elmo with you.

"I go outside now" means not on your life, it's 15 below and snowing besides.

Food names are a puzzle, too. You know them but somehow, at the critical moment, never remember to use them. When an unhappy Frances wails close to mealtimes, and I ask her, "Are you hungry Frances?" she always says, "Yeah!"

"What would you like?"

"Snack!"

"What would you like to eat?"

~pause~

"Lunch!"

"What would you like to have for lunch?"

"SNACK!"

I understand that you want to eat. What I need from you is an idea of what you won't reject out of hand, so I don't have to fix half a dozen different things before you'll taste one.

Tag is fun. Or is it hide and seek? I'm not sure what game it is we're playing when I hide behind a pillar in the basement, and you chase around and around it while I try to walk just fast enough not to let you see me, you howling with laughter, until you catch a glimpse and cry, "I found you!"

You sure did. But I'm not trying to hide very hard, you know. It's too much fun to be found.

If you insist on being two, then I suppose next year at this time you're going to want to be three--aren't you?--and then four, and five, and so on, and who knows where it will end? I tell you now I think it's no good, this growing up business; it will only lead to trouble. Better you stay two, and I get to be your mama forever. Is it a deal?

Say "yes" by eating birthday cake. If you eat this green bean salad with balsamic dressing instead, I'll know you're saying, "no."

Ah, good girl. Two forever it is.

P.P.P.P.S. I've thought it over again. The alternative to you growing up is too terrible to contemplate. So I take it back. You go ahead and grow up, ok? Only--slow down a little. I can't keep up!

Your besotted Mama