Lexi - Happy 11th Birthday!

 Dear Lexi,

ELEVEN! It’s hard to believe that we’re that much closer to teenager-hood with our second baby but seeing how much you have changed over the past year, I really shouldn’t be that surprised. Truthfully, I’m not sure I’m entirely on board with all of these changes, but I know I have to continue to step back and let you discover your own tastes and assert your own opinions (something which you have never had a problem with truthfully!). Gone is my little girl who chose clothes that were super-patterned and bright and colourful (i.e. the louder, the better). Instead, you’re much more focused on what’s in style and what looks good together – opting usually now for more muted colours like your big sister. You two are basically the same size so you share clothes (which is lovely, except that I’m still somehow buying two of everything). I still see elements of your old self come through though, like your pink converse shoes instead of the very standard black that every other tween/teen is wearing these days. And of course, you still do love your stuffies (much as I try to encourage you to pack some away), and you are still the best hugger around.

But you, much like your siblings, are more often in your room, less likely to want to snuggle. You’ve mostly given up on animated/kids movies, and love watching horror films with your father. You like hanging out with your friends, and watching YouTube, and reading in your room. It’s fun to watch you grow and change, see your personality continue to develop, learn more about the person you are becoming. You are a perfectionist – and insist on always finishing all of your homework immediately, striving to do the best job that you can. You get more frustrated with assignments that are a bit more abstract, with no right or wrong answer (despite the aforementioned love of asserting your opinion, somehow it doesn’t translate into your schoolwork!) – but you have a real knack for things that are more black and white, with a clear right or wrong answer. You are still the best at arguing your point (Lawyer Lexi) and once you focus on something, you FOCUS.

I love watching you grow and change, but please, please don’t lose ALL of those quirks and obsessions (yes, maybe even the stuffies!) that make you the funny, feisty little Lexi you’ve always been. Regardless, we love you more than you’ll ever know and are so proud of the person you are.

 

Love,

Mama

Mercedes - Happy 13th Birthday!

Dear Mercedes,

It’s official – you’re a teenager! (And yes, that means that I am old enough to have a teenager.) When I think back to the days and weeks leading up to your birth, I remember both a sense of excitement and nervous anticipation. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I knew I was excited to take on the challenge of becoming a mother – becoming YOUR mother. I feel much the same now. I know there will be rough times ahead for us all – teenagers are meant to be difficult. You’ll straddle the line between kid and adult, test boundaries, push me away and then pull me close. Because you are our first, we really have no idea what parenting a teenager is like (except for those foggy memories we have of actually being teenagers – the confusion and heartache and uncertainty and feeling of being WAY smarter than your parents). But we do know you – we know how funny and smart you are. We know your quick wit and your devotion to your friends. We know your sensitive heart and the way you cry at movies (no idea where you got that trait from). We know how proud we are to be your parents, and that you are our greatest experiment.

For now, you are happy to be with me – you frequently want to snuggle while we binge-watch tv shows, you like reading with me after your siblings go to bed. And I’m trying my hardest to hold on for dear life because I know that can change in an instant. You will pull away. You will be gone more than you are here. If anything, I’m grateful to Covid for delaying the inevitable. But I do hope that you always remember that no matter what, I’m immensely proud to be your mom. I hope you remember that I will always, always be here for you – to listen, to vent to, to offer advice, to give you a ride out of a sticky situation, to be your out when you’re pressured to do something you don’t want to do, to send funny TikTok videos to, to be your shopping buddy.

So be kind to me, my newly-minted teenager, as I wax nostalgic about the days when you wouldn’t let me out of your sight, and needed to sleep beside me, and were fully dependent on me. I’m so proud to see you spread your wings and learn to be your own mini-adult. But I’ll be ever so thankful if you continue to let me walk beside you as you grow.

Love,

Mum

Holden - Happy 9th Birthday!

Dear Holden,

Happy 9^th birthday! I remember your last birthday pretty vividly, because we were closing in on almost an entire year of the global Covid-19 pandemic, and I felt so terrible that you were going to celebrate your birthday in a very different way. Despite an entire year passing, and all of us being in various stages of vaccination, it feels like we’re right back where we started! Thankfully, it looks like we can still celebrate you in some fashion – a big family dinner and an outing of your choice, etc. But it’s not quite the same when this doom and gloom hangs over us. Regardless, I know we’ll make the best of it and I’m just so happy we’re all healthy and able to spend time together.

Of course, you’ve grown and changed over the past year – sometimes it feels like I blink and you’ve gotten taller, or more freckle-y, or lost yet another mispronunciation (there’s basically none left now *sob*). But you still look like my little boy in so many ways (maybe those freckles have something to do with it!).

You’re doing great in school, even though it’s yet another year filled with disruptions and strangeness (masks and recess cohorts and no field trips or parents in the schools, etc.). You were chosen to participate in a math contest and had a glowing report card (well, apart from the recommendation that you try not to talk to your friends so much in class – I have no idea where you got that trait from!). You gave Minecraft a try this year and became absolutely obsessed with it and have also recently discovered a fascination with all things military vehicles (jets and helicopters and tanks) – so much so that for your family birthday outing (instead of a birthday party) we’re planning on going to the Base Borden Military Museum!

As always, you remain funny and witty and smart, with sharp observations and intense roasts for your sisters especially. You can be a little grumpy, particularly when you are hungry (but it’s nothing that three breakfast sandwiches won’t cure). You still give the best hugs and snuggles, although those are happening less and less frequently these days (*sob* again).

Above all else, I’m so happy to watch you grow and to get to be a witness to how your amazing mind works and the things you discover each day. I’m so proud to be your mom and excited to see what the next year holds for my special ‘baby’ boy.

Love,

Mama

Goodbye Vinny - 13 months old

Last Saturday, June 5^th, we had to say goodbye to a big piece of our hearts. To say we are all still reeling is an understatement. Life goes on, and we get up and eat breakfast and go to school/work and make jokes at the dinner table and laugh as a family – but I know from (unfortunately way too much) experience that this pain will exist for a long time. Sometimes on the surface, with tears and angry outbursts, but more often a quiet undercurrent of grief – these brief hitches where you call a cat the wrong name, or tell people you have three cats instead of two, or look for the little face that should be there when you do something he was always involved in. 

I miss the way he’d paw at the shower door, or how he’d beg for me to pick him up and hold him like a baby. I miss the way he’d immediately flop into a snuggle if you picked him up, “purr mode activated” as Holden would say, complete with happy little chirps. I miss the way Diesel would call for him and he’d instantly perk up out of a dead sleep and go running so they could play. Now Diesel calls for him and no one answers but us, which clearly isn’t good enough for him. I miss the way he’d calmly wait for you to put his harness on so he could go safely explore the backyard, and I miss the way he’d hold your face with his paws for kisses (or love bites for Daddy). I miss how much he’d struggle to get under the covers and would scratch at my shoulders in the middle of the night so I could roll out the red carpet for snuggles. I miss how goofy and silly he was – never climbing cat trees properly but doing disastrously uncoordinated pull-ups instead, and trying to fit through the space between the blinds to see out the window; stretching and reaching out his paws to touch you but always missing, or crawling into his little bed and then flipping it over and not seeming to care. I miss his silly sideways hops and how he’d stand on his hind legs as a kitten to make himself look bigger to Diesel (despite the fact that he very quickly grew bigger than this big brother). I miss how soft and downy and chubby he was, with his crooked right eye and his big belly and his furry eyebrows.

We got Vinny at a time when most people were getting new pets – pandemic pets for everyone. How ironic then, that he died due to complications from a coronavirus while we are still on lockdown from Covid-19. We only had nine months with our sweet guy and it will always be shocking to me that we didn’t get more. His spark and his charm will never be forgotten. He was such a bright light in our lives and my heart aches every day thinking about the hole his loss leaves in our family. I’ve lost pets before, in various ways, and it’s always horrible. But Bruiser and Vinny were something special – sweet and funny and goofy and eternally loving – and it’s just not fair that they both left us so suddenly, and so young. We never have enough time with our pets, I know this – but we should have had much, much more with both of them. Of course, that won’t stop us from dusting ourselves off and continuing to open our home and our hearts to more animals – because that’s who we are and that’s what makes us feel complete.

Goodbye sweet Baby Schmoops – I’m so sorry we couldn’t do more for you.

Love,

Mama

Lexi - Happy 10th Birthday!

Dear Lexi,

Or should I say Alexis, Lex, Lexi-Lou, Rad Lou, Ratatouille – your nicknames seem endless these days! Regardless, Happy 10^th Birthday to my sweet girl – it’s hard to believe we are already in double-digit territory. I remember the day you were born so vividly, and how small and feisty you were. You are definitely bigger, but the feistiness remains – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I love seeing you grow into the kind of kid that I always wanted to be – you are confident and brave and have strong opinions about what you like and don’t like, what you want to eat, what you want to wear. You are such a joy to watch mature – although I think your father is a bit scared of the abundance of female hormones that are rapidly taking over our household. You still read voraciously, often falling asleep with your lights on and your book beside you – and you still watch YouTube just as wholeheartedly.

Ten is such a unique age, as you straddle the line between kid and tween (your sister only recently firmly landed on one side of that line ha) – your eyes light up whenever anyone mentions ice cream and your bed is still fully covered with stuffies, but you don’t want me to shop for you anymore and you’ve started asking for more freedom around screentime (and you wear bras and deodorant!). I love seeing you figure out your place in the world, because you do it in typical Lexi fashion. With feeling and flair, always.

As Covid-19 continues to be a hot topic here, you are now celebrating your second birthday in lockdown, but again in typical Lexi fashion, you accept it without complaint. You know you’ll be spoiled appropriately, and thankfully for us your family still remains the most important celebrants of all. We have a full day planned of safe, at-home celebrations and we’ll make the best of it, as we have the past year. I know it’s been a terrible thing that we’ve had to endure these past 14 months, but I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to be home with you all this entire time – spending so much time together is a LOT, but it’s also wonderful. My favourite part? Watching the relationship between you and your siblings continue to grow and flourish. There’s fights, for sure, but I’m so blessed to watch you all love each other and get along so well.

Happy birthday lovey – keep being you and don’t ever lose that sparkle we all love so much.

Love,

Mama

Mercedes - Happy 12th Birthday!

 Dear Mercedes,

Happy 12th birthday to the person who forever changed me. My heart, my mind, my soul were forever altered the moment you entered this world. Becoming a mother, becoming YOUR mother, and learning together how to do this whole parenting thing has been the greatest joy of my life. There have been tears and worry and frustration and anger, but there has also been immense, overwhelming pride and joy at watching you grow into the amazing young person you are. 

Every year on your birthday I feel incredibly nostalgic for those days just before you were born - where I had no idea yet of the impact you would make on our lives. And then the early days of your life, where your father and I had absolutely NO idea what we were doing - we had no confidence in anything other than the undeniable fact of our love for you. I still tell you frequently that I have no idea how to parent someone of your age - you are the first, and as such, our greatest experiment. As you get older and begin to navigate the tween life - smartphones and social media and best friends and boyfriends and makeup - there is a constant worrying as to whether we are doing the right thing. Too permissive? Too strict? Can we actually count all the ways we are screwing up your future? But somehow, there you are - emerging as a smart, sensitive, funny, empathetic, and heartbreakingly beautiful (inside and out) girl, all on your own (although I do want to take some credit for the person you are growing into).

It's hard to believe that the extremely dependent, needy baby you were 12 years ago now doesn't need tucking in at night, and is binge-watching Grey's Anatomy and can stay up later than your parents and stay home alone and is nearly taller than me. It's happened so slowly but also all at the same time, this maturing and turning into someone who slowly needs our supervision and guidance less and less. I am not naïve - I know there are rocky years ahead (it's terrible planning that we will have three teenagers in this house at the same time) and there will be many, many more moments of tears and worry and frustration and anger. But I'm counting on those joyful moments and the strength of our relationship to carry us through. 

Happy birthday my daughter - I love you to the moon and back.

Mama

Holden - Happy 8th Birthday!

Dear Holden,

Happy 8^th birthday to the sweet little boy who I fell in love with from the very first moment. Not even the first moment I held you or laid eyes on you, but the first moment I knew you were there. I knew you were a boy without a doubt (although your father didn’t believe me) and I was so excited to meet the very best surprise gift of our lives.

Watching you grow and change this past year has been nothing short of wonderous – 2020 has been A YEAR. Almost a year into a global pandemic that is still going strong, I’ve been so surprised and amazed at how well you’ve all handled the upheaval in your lives (far better than many adults to be honest) – being out of school for six months, playgrounds closed, no summer camp, going back to school with masks and restrictions and distancing. Not seeing all of your friends, not doing karate, not hugging your grandparents for MONTHS. No movie theaters or escape rooms or indoor play spaces or summer vacation or Great Wolf Lodge. But through it all, you just keep smiling. You adjust and you embrace what you are allowed – you snuggle in close under the blankets and hug your cats and snowskate or snowboard with your father and love watching movies with your family. You play with your friends in class at recess and read Captain Underpants books in your bed and draw sharks over and over and tell us all about the great facts that Mystery Doug teaches you.

I am so proud to watch you grow – it’s hard to believe that it was already eight years ago that you calmly entered the world, in spectacular fashion befitting a Christmas Eve birthday. But on the other hand, it’s so difficult for me to remember a time when we didn’t have the magical little boy that completes our family. I am sorry that this year’s birthday celebration won’t be quite as elaborate as I usually aim for – no big family dinner, no birthday party with friends. But as you said “It’s still going to be a fun birthday with my family!” – we’ll still order sushi and have cake and open presents and let you be the star of the day and I’ll retell your birth story and we’ll look at pictures of the giant baby that I somehow grew all those years ago.

Keep on smiling with those freckled, dimpled cheeks that melt my heart every time – and please don’t ever stop being my little boy. No matter how much you grow, you will always, always be the boy that forever stole my heart.

Love,

Mama