Exactly two years ago today, your mother and I woke up early on a beautiful, fall-in-California Sunday morning, thinking that the most exciting part of our day would be getting together for dinner with our friends [who had sent us to the emergency room days earlier from another dinner party, on a false alarm, which, of course, is now a tradition with our group of friends whenever someone’s pregnant], watching the lone baby in our group get dressed up for his first Halloween, and maybe giving out some candy to the neighborhood kids.  We were twelve days away from your due date, and had no reason to think you’d be playing a little Halloween trick on us.

 

But sometime before 7 a.m., I think it was, your mother discovered that she was wet.  Yes, her water had broken—on the one day she had dreaded, Halloween.  Only a week or so before, her OB/GYN had told us that you could be on your way in mere days, if your mother didn’t slow down.  So she stopped work early, and she prayed to make it till November, visions of a future of goth-tinged birthday parties and black decorations flashing before her eyes.  Well, it seems that you didn’t want to wait that long.  And so we found ourselves, on Halloween morning, checking into the hospital by 9 a.m.  Even then, your mother seemed intent on convincing everyone that we could hold on till 12:01 a.m. November first.  But you had other plans, our little trick-or-treat baby.

 

 

Well, again, you weren’t in the mood for waiting.  As your mother’s water had broken and contractions weren’t progressing, they decided to administer pitocin to help things along.  At some point, I remember hearing these awful screams coming from the room next door—our nurse confirmed that that woman hadn’t gotten an epidural in time.  Your mother had gone from a total “natural childbirth as a feminist act” stance that informed her undergraduate thesis in medical anthropology to, after watching and participating in all kinds of deliveries in med school and residency, a solid belief that pain meds, rather than dissociating a mother from the act of childbirth, could actually help a mother participate and experience more fully—and she wasn’t gonna miss out on that epidural.  The timeline’s a bit blurry now, but I remember holding your mother’s hand tight through the pre-drugs contractions, fearing for her but trying to do everything I could to be there and help her through it.  And then I remember, once the drugs were doing their thing, your grandmother (my mother) noticing something on the monitor and asking if that was a contraction—”Oh, I guess it was,” was your mother’s reply.

 

But I also remember when the anesthesiologist came in to administer the epidural.  I am not good with needles, and knowing what an epidural is and how it can go wrong didn’t help things.  Neither did when the elderly gentleman with a thick accent that made him hard to understand recommended that I not look at what he was doing, but not to go in the bathroom either in case it made me faint in there.  Your mother took it all with strength and determination.

 

From there, things went pretty quickly.  There would be no hanging on till November for you, or for us.  All your grandparents got to the hospital in time, despite us mistakenly telling them to take their time.  The doctor on call for our OB’s office that day was a friend your mother had trained with during residency—I remember that at one point, earlier in the day, your mother told her to take her son trick-or-treating, there’d be plenty of time.  But the pitocin worked, and by 6 p.m., the doctor told your mother to start pushing.  Luckily, your nana, your mother’s mother, got there in time to hold her hand through it.  I didn’t want to let go of her hand, either, and I was so zealous in counting off breaths or seconds for each push that the nurses had to tell me when to stop.  And then, at about 6:30, the doctor told me to come around and see you being born.

 

Everything was and is a blur at that point.  I remember holding you, and your mother holding you, and me holding your mother and you.  I remember cutting your umbilical cord.  The weighing, the cleaning, the doctor and nurses taking care of your mother, bringing the grandparents in, making phone calls.  Your “aunties” and “uncles” who we stood up for dinner in favor of your birth weren’t too happy that we didn’t let them come right over, but we were all exhausted.  I remember your mother being so hungry that, to this day, she still raves about that hospital-cafeteria turkey sandwich she had for dinner.

 

 

The next day, after more monitoring and weighing and measuring, we took you home, after frantically trying to figure out how to make the car seat work.  You were our trick-or-treat baby, our little Pumpkin, who didn’t want to wait another week to come home.  And our lives have never been the same since.

 

For two years, we have watched you grow, watched in awe and pride and love as you have gone from newborn to baby to toddler, from a tiny, immobile infant governed by reflexes to a real person, a kid, running all over the place, making complete sentences, singing songs and reading letters, saying “No!” and “This mine!” and “Whatchoo doing?” and “I love you, mama” and “I love you, daddy.”  

 

Your mother and I love you more than words can say.  We know that, as you grow and learn and explore and test limits and ask questions, we can only guide and protect you so much—but that doesn’t mean we won’t try.  For me, I know how much of a privilege it has been to be at home with you for these first two years of your life, to watch you, hold you, protect you, be with you all the time.  It’s funny how things work out, how your second birthday coincides with the imminent beginning of my first job besides being your dad since you were born.  And so all of us, as a family, are beginning new adventures, together and separately.  It’s going to be a big change, a big adjustment for us all.  But you are ready.  I’m not so sure about me sometimes, but baby, you are ready.

 

You’re asleep as I write this, your mom too.  It’s your birthday, and you’re two years old, and another adventure awaits you.  It’s your birthday, and you’re two years old, and that means it’s the second anniversary of the day you made me a father and your mom a mother, of the day you made our family so much more full of love and joy and promise.

 

And so, what I really want to say to you, is thank you.  Thank you for being here, for being you, for making me a father.  And to your mother, thank you too, for your love, your strength, for being my partner and my friend.  Happy second birthday, Pumpkin.  We love you.