Happy Belated, Abby Rose

Abby turned 20 months on the third.  And in the craziness of our ongoing "situation," I completely let it slip me by.  Not that I normally have a "thing" that I do for it- it's not her actual birthday, after all.  But up until this month, I've posted a little blurb on Facebook (which I'm sure that my friends don't find annoying at all), and made a little mental note of the occasion.  After all, come this November, I won't be tracking her growth in months anymore.

I will have a two-year-old.

I've said it before, too many times, but I can't believe the little girl that she is becoming.  Especially when I look back at pictures that I took just yesterday a few months ago.  I feel as though I'm in the middle of a stop-motion exhibit, but I'm not seeing those subtle changes as they occur.  They are slow, and swift, understated, and conspicuous, impossibly, synonymously.  I could swear that some days her face was frozen in mid-metamorphosis, her eyes had widened, but not lifted, the bridge of her nose had been temporarily left behind.  And then weeks would go by beneath my notice, and an entirely new face had emerged- I took too long to blink.

Even noting what changes I could, I still can't fathom how she got from there to here.  How she was once an abstract notion, then microscopic life-force, then fetus, then infant, then crawler, then cruiser- and now?  Now, she is this amazing little person, this force of nature.

This incredible personality.

She plays peek-a-boo- but now she knows better, and she does the "hiding."

"Where's the baby?"

"There she is!"

She dances (though, she's done this practically since birth- she's just better at it now).

She plays "dress-up," and she twirls.

She has impeccable taste.

 
She's fascinated with the world, and people, around her.

And her brother, tiny as he is now, is not so far behind.

My two babies, what a pair they make.

I'm so sorry that I missed it, Abby Rose.  But I suppose I should have learned by now not to cling so desperately to the past.  Doesn't stop it from slipping by like sand through my fingers.