Today is Asher's birthday. Oh my sweet Asher. We were at breakfast this morning and Ben said "Two years ago Asher was 5 hours old and we were resting in the mother-baby unit," and I just drifted back to that place. How in the world could we have possibly known what the next two years would bring? I can't even believe it now and I've lived it.
I just finished a book and in it is one of my new favorite phrases: "maximum maternal velocity". As a young mom lays dying she says to her daughter I gave you everything. And the daughter narrates, She did. She came at us with maximum maternal velocity. Two years ago, exhausted after 27 hours of labor, holding my hours-old newborn, I wouldn't have known what that meant (I might have thought I did after going through 27 hours of labor...that counts as some amount of maternal velocity, that's for sure...but I didn't really know, not yet). But I do now. I have spent so much of my life trying to figure out what else to do, what to do better, what to do differently, what I should be doing instead. And it is only since I have become a mom (and even then it didn't happen overnight) that my world has slowly found balance. Ten years ago I would have been thinking about how to save the world. And that is still true today, I haven't lost my ability to think globally or to care universally, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said my world wasn't almost entirely the two year old bundle of tantrums and new words and sticky fingers sitting in my lap. The truth is, when my life is winding down, I will certainly look back on what I did for others and if I used my education and if I did the right things at the right times...but I will measure so much of my achievement in whether or not my children would say of me, "She came at us with maximum maternal velocity."
I love you Asher. You are my world & my greatest joy. Happy Birthday Little.
Some of our newest words
How old is Asher?
Lucky us! Daddy joined us for birthday pancakes at IHOP before going to work.
(Yeah, these two aren't related at all....)
After pancakes we went to the balloon museum with our friends Max, Zach, Luke, & Gracie for story time. We did an arts & crafts project and Asher was only kind of reprimanded by a volunteer for unwinding the yarn and throwing it through the air like a football (instead of neatly wrapping it up into a 'dust bunny' project).
When Asher wakes up we will go get his haircut (pictures to come) and then have dinner and a birthday treat once Ben gets home. All in all, it's been a great day.
Before the Haircut
After the Haircut (with gel in his hair...what?)
Rawr!
Blowing out the candles on his birthday sundae
This is a picture from when Asher was still 1 :)
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