Our girl turns one this week

Our newly crawling girl!

I have been keeping Avi home from school Monday and Tuesday in preparation for his summer at home; he is in love with the Little Farm at Tilden and kept asking me, "is this nature, Mommy?"

It's a pretty magical place

Avi made out with one of Clara's dresses during our recent trip to Bainbridge Island and has been wearing it almost daily.

I think both our kids look pretty cute in dresses.

Avi asked first thing this morning, "Is it baby's birthday today?" He is both anxious and excited, a mix of anticipation I know all too well.

Lilit turns one on Thursday and I am wallowing in nostalgia. Thank goodness for my partner, without whom (he was at another damn conference last week) we would surely barrel into the depths of despair. Leeor was listening to me woefully talk about her birth, how I fretted about the medical interventions, my experience, blah blah. He wondered if he could interject with his own memories of her birth and I was, and am, so grateful for his perspective, his re-framing of our daughter's entrance into the world.

According to him, it was pretty relaxing. We were a planned induction; there was no rush to get to the hospital. His version was sweet and lovely, just like our daughter herself. "She just needed a nudge to come out, " which is exactly what my OB told me when she said she wanted to give me "just a little Pitocin" to "jumpstart" my labor, what she knew, she said, my body knew how to do.

Her development this past year has followed suit. Lilit is a thoughtful being, a purposeful creature with endless depth. What people in child development might call "motor planning" doesn't begin to describe how this girl works as she surveys her surroundings, her options, decides what to do.

Last week she got herself into the crawl position for the first time. She has been working toward it for months. At her 9 month appointment, our beloved pediatrician assured me he wasn't worried about her. I must admit that I was super judgmental about milestones before I had children of my own; when I sat in people's living rooms and worked with their children, I sometimes tsked to myself on the inside. Now I have a baby who, one week shy of her first birthday, demonstrates the "emerging" skill of crawling. And I know she is just fine.

I love having a daughter. This past year has been rich with learning, and sometimes of the most simple lessons, like slow down. Lilit teaches me to stop in my tracks, take it all in, worry less about what other people think.

I love that she is the one who sleeps through the night from the moment we moved to Berkeley and she landed in her own room, snug in the crib that first belonged to Avi (not that anyone could forget as he talks about it quite a lot). She worships her big brother, too, and for all of his jealous harassment, he loves her too. Their evolving relationship continues to be a source of great joy to Leeor and me.

Ever helpful, Avi suggests that Lilit wants chocolate cake for her birthday. He already found the candles, too, and explained to her that he will help her blow them out if she can't quite do it on her own. Avi has also been talking about when he was one; this is juxtaposed with his musings about when he will be 5 as well as 14. He's pretty deep, too, just like his baby sister.

We will celebrate her quietly on Thursday, just the four of us. One of Leeor's favorite recollections of her birth was that, for a few brief hours, it was just the 3 of us, Lilit and her parents, snug in the luxurious trappings of a private San Francisco hospital, deep into the night and early morning, oblivious to the city awakening around us.

When I reflected on my children with my yoga teacher, I remarked that Lilit didn't "belong" to me in the way that Avi did. "She's more universal," my teacher suggested, and it really feels that way. She is mine, no doubt about it, we reach for each other smoothly and often, our Wednesday morning separations painful as I go off to work. But she is also her own child in a way that Avi isn't; he got me all to himself but Lilit got a woman already settled into motherhood. It's a win-win for all of us, but mostly we are just grateful to celebrate our beautiful, healthy daughter, our sweet Lilit.