Dear beautiful baby boy

Look at you, my little sunshine. 

Just look at you. 

How much you have grown and how much you have learned since I wrote you a letter for your first birthday last year. You have left behind the little baby you were not too long ago. And with tiny but eager little steps you have entered childhood. And though I was with you every moment and every heartbeat of the past year, it feels like all the transformations and all the changes that occurred must have happened while I was sleeping. Surely they happened when I blinked or when I was too busy doing something. In those moments when mommy isn’t watching and you can do something impossible. You must have secretly used those moments for growing and learning and for performing magic. 

And while I observe you grow and prosper with the greatest amazement and pride, to you this is nothing but natural. There is so much to say about the way you anchor your little feet in this world and in this life. The way you take notice of new things and situations around you, that you have never seen or done before. You meet the new and the unknown with an insatiable curiosity and with effortless confidence. You trust your own timing. And there is an unshakable sureness of self that you wear in your eyes that leads me to pray that it will never ever fade.

For some reason you call Mickey Mouse ‘Nana’, and you are absolutely crazy about him. Your room is full of balls in all colors, shapes and sizes, and yet it’s the only thing you see when we enter a toy store. There’s nothing that makes you happier than to play football or basketball like the ‘big abi’s’ do, close to your favorite play area, or to run around on the beach throwing the ball as high up into the air as you possibly can and then let yourself fall into the sand. You still don’t like mashed potatoes, or anything else mashed or pureed for that matter. But you love turșu and bread, which confirms your Turkish blood more than a passport ever will. You always look for the moon in sky, even during the day, and when you find it you point your little finger at it and shout ‘ay dede’, meaning ‘grandpa moon’. You do that too when you see a Turkish flag. Spotting all the ‘ay dede’ flags in town has become a popular game when driving around in the car.

After a long and exhausting day of playing, discovering, cuddling and carefully maneuvering around and out of the inevitable tantrums that are notorious for your age, I dim the lights in your room and hold you in my arms for little while as I walk up and down the room. You are getting bigger and heavier to carry but your head still fits perfectly into the side of my neck. Close enough to kiss. Close enough to smell your hair. That other-worldly baby smell has been replaced by smells of play doh, strawberries, beach sand and shampoo. But through all this you have some kind of heavenly smell around you still that I softly breathe into every cell of my being, all the way through to my soul, before I kiss you good night.

I look at you and I see you, my precious little boy. 

I see how you learn what I teach you, and then right the next moment I realize that it is you teaching me something in return. And so we learn and we grow and we change together as one each new day. Rising above the selves that we were only yesterday.

Tomorrow we will celebrate your second birthday. We ordered a big cake, with a Mickey Mouse on top course, and you will blow out two candles already. Two candles. The day you were born comes back into my memory again. All the events of that day are so lively and so real, that it seems like it was only yesterday when I saw you for the first time, causing my heart to grow by a tenfold in one instant. Happy Birthday my little munchkin. I am looking so much forward to see what you have in store for us this year and I can’t wait to discover many more things together. We love you so much more than anything. You are the best thing that ever happened to us. Thank you for being mine.

Mama