Two

Ezra. You are sunshine and stubbornness. Independent, yet anything but a loner. A mimic, but with your own ideas about anything. Easygoing right up until the moment you've been pushed just far enough. Fearless, except for when you are not. 

You still seem so small to me, but your personality is as oversized as the 2T hand-me-downs currently are. You make friends everywhere you go, charming adults with your smile and cheerful greetings and offers of plastic cupcakes or empty teacups. You are easily the best two-year-old conversationalist I've ever met, chatting about everything from shoes to elbows to WALL*E to choo choos to meatballs.

You can kick a ball or hit it off a tee with a bat, you think stretching your arms behind you while crouching before tossing them up in the air counts as jumping, you can walk down the stairs alone, slowed only by your tendency to stop and applaud for yourself. You watched some big kids breakdance once and now like to put your head on the ground and kick your feet when music comes on. If your big brother can do it, well dammit, you're going to give a good try too. You love to climb and run and scream and laugh and dance. 

I've already had some twinges of regret over the past two weeks that you will probably not remember the time when you were our baby, our youngest. When you were the one doing everything new and different and for the first time, the unsteady rocket-powered center of our world. But you were our baby, my baby, the little boy with the smile that made all of us smile, the one who -- no matter how tired or stressed or out-of-patience I felt -- could instantly lift my mood just by lifting you out of your crib. "Uppy!" you'd say. 

"Wuv woo," you also say. 

"Ock and ting!" you demand at bedtime, referring to a new step in the routine that you now insist on. We curl up together in the old rocking chair, wrapped in a blanket, and sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. You put your head on my chest and hum along, and like everything else you do in the world, it makes me simply, beautifully happy. 

Ezra's Second Birthday
Music: Here Comes Your Man by Meaghan Smith