Your mother admonished me not to title this post, “Holy crap!  You’re three!”  It seems I’ve been saying or writing stuff that starts with that a lot lately.  Crude, yes, but nothing else quite captures the combination of awe, pride and fear that is the essence of parenting a toddler.  As in:

“Holy crap! The Pumpkin did this!” or “Holy crap! The Pumpkin did that.”  Or “Holy crap!  How did she do that?”  Or “Holy crap!  What are we gonna do now?”

“Holy crap!  She’s already THREE!”  A beat.  “How did that happen?”

Today, on mama’s favorite holiday (heh), you are three.  And what an amazing, smart, beautiful, kick-ass three-year-old you’ve become.  We must’ve done something right.  I don’t know what, but either that or we’re just lucky beyond deserving.

A year ago, as you turned two, we went through some changes.  After being with you every day, at home, since you were born, I started a new job, in a new field, in an office from 8 to 5 every weekday, and you went to daycare.  None of the decisions we made around this were easy, and we were nervous and scared, for us and for you.  But you flourished at daycare, making friends, learning new things, becoming more independent, becoming more you.

I love watching you play by yourself, listening to you pretend, play different parts in different voices with a broken beaded necklace you’ve named “my friend Sprinkles” and various stuffed animals you’ve renamed after Sesame Street characters because mommy and daddy are too cheap to buy real ones.

I love listening to you laugh as you jump up and down, climbing on the furniture and freaking your mother out.  I love hearing you sing, even when it’s along to the same mix-CD from your BFF’s birthday party over. and over. and over again.

I love playing with you in our toy-strewn living room that, as some friends have remarked, looks like Toys-R-Us threw up.  (You mean you’re supposed to put things away every day?  What?)  I love reading you books, when you climb up into my lap and force a book into my hand.  “Read it, daddy.  Please.”  “Again!”  (I love how you pronounce “again” like it has three syllables.)

I love watching you eat.  Damn, girl, you are so our kid.

I love watching you snuggle with your mama, play with her, call for her in your little falsetto “cute” voice.  [The demanding her instead of me—”No!  I.  Want.  Mama!”—accompanied by  pushing upon my approach, yeah, not so much, but what the hell, you’re three, right?]  I love watching you two play in our room, hiding under the covers from “monsters” (a.k.a. daddy) and being delighted beyond belief when you surprise me once again, even though you’re still in the exact same place (silly daddy).

I love it when you do something that’s so like us that your mother and I just have to nudge each other and are like, “Damn!  You know where she gets that!”  Okay, so not so much the regret thing you do when you say no to something you actually wanted, or the extra-special brand of cranky you display when you’re tired or hungry or both, but, well, it’s still crazy to see us reflected in you like that.

I love watching your extra-big-frown “sad face” that you get, almost subconsciously, whenever you tell a sad story, or when you reluctantly agree to something with a big, sigh-filled, drawn-out “Ooo-kay.”

I love how you just totally surprise us, growing up without telling us, becoming this big kid where there used to be a baby.  “I’m big now,” you constantly remind us.  Yes, baby, you are.  Like just the other day, in the middle of our ongoing potty-training drama [it seems to be going on in a lot of toddler households right now] you decided that you didn’t want to wear pull-ups to bed.  Holy crap.  Okay, we said, expecting a big wet disaster.  [That is, of course, we said okay after your special, age-appropriate toddler-sized tantrum that included lots of screaming, crying, and kicking so as to make sure we couldn’t sneak those pull-ups on without your consent.]  The next morning, you called for us, sat on the potty, and peed.  You went to daycare in panties for the first time, and went to the potty twice in the morning.  Of course, when I picked you up, you were wearing the last of the extra clothes I had brought and I got to take home a bag of wet stuff.  But hey, it was the first day.  After all this time and half-hearted trying on our part, you decided that it was time.  You’re big now. 

You’re three.

We love you, baby.  Happy birthday.