Dear Thea,
You turned 18 months old this week. As I reflect back on the last year-and-a-half of you in our lives, it all seems a bit hazy. I never intended on having three children in three years. But those are the circumstances into which you arrived and family life is all the richer for your presence. Exhaustion is just my accepted way of life, for now.
I feel rather overwhelmed by emotion when I consider how you were such a surprise addition to our family. We had been in Australia for six weeks and I began to feel terrible. I thought I was having a breakdown from the stress of immigrating. But the truth was more confronting: I was pregnant, with you. I felt so many different emotions I went numb and stayed that way for the next eight months until you arrived.
Your arrival, as I watched the sunrise over the ocean through the hospital window, was beautiful. New life always is. From the moment you were born you were utterly cherished and adored. You still are. I traded my numbness for a fog of sleep deprivation that is yet to lift. At 18 months you still do not sleep properly through the night and while I love you dearly, I am so tired of seeing you at all hours. You are now a toddler and it is time to learn that nighttime is not for playing, crying, feeding, climbing on me or shouting. It is for sleeping.
Yet, we’ll forgive your disinterest in sleep because you bring so much fun, love and laughter to our days. I can’t bear thinking you may never have been here at all. One day, when you are a bit bigger, I may explain the ways in which contraceptives are no obstacle for fighters like you!
I love watching the way your sisters dote on you. They spend their days bickering with one another but when it comes to you, it seems you can do no wrong. It surprises me they still shower you with endless affection when you are prone to pull out handfuls of hair, hit them, destroy everything they create and mess up any room you enter (including theirs). When you push them away or fight aggressively for my attention, your sisters just smile and pat you lovingly. And they miraculously sleep through your nights of endless screaming. I wish I had their ability to ignore your hysteria. You have a way of diffusing situations and bringing neutrality just by being you.
It’s hard to recall a time when you were not with us. Perhaps it is the sleep-deprivation which has affected my memory but I struggle to imagine or recall a time when you did not enrich our lives with your big personality and outgoing character.
As you begin uttering your first words and transforming from a needy infant into a little person, I watch with delight as your personality develops and you become more you. I will leave it to Dr Seuss to say it better than I can:
Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.
Happy Birthday to You! by Dr Seuss
Happy half-birthday, my darling Thea-Wea.
Love,
Mum