Note: I wrote “notes” for this letter to you on October 25, 2011, one month after it should have published. I finished writing it January 25, 2012, four months after it should have published. The notes are choppy. We got busy. I suck. And I’ve thought about this a million times and have kicked myself almost daily for letting FOUR WHOLE MONTHS get away from me without any letters. I love you bug.

I was shopping at Country Bumpkins, this adorable antique/craft store in College Hill, today. The shop owner came up to me and said “You might get tired of hearing it, but I can’t get enough of hearing her call you Mama.” Paisley kept pointing things out to me “Mama flowers, Mama bear, Mama, phone.” So there were a lot of them. I told the owner that I never get tired of it. I waited a long time to hear that word and I savor every syllable.

One of your newest phrases was “I did it!” You say it with all the pride you can muster, whether you put away a toy or walked across the room. I like that you like being proud of yourself, it means you’re cognisant of your own growth. It reminds me that for as little as you are, you’re incredibly aware of yourself and everything around you. I’m glad we talk to you like a person, and not a baby. You did it… and you get it.

We’ve brainwashed you and you’ve been accepted in to the Apple fanboy crew. As fate would have it, on the very night that Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, passed away from pancreatic cancer you walked up to daddy’s computer, pointed to the Apple, and said “Mac!” You also started calling the iPad by name. Your proficiency with this device, and our iPhones, baffles me. I can say yes, the devices are incredibly intuitive (and they are), or I could say you’re a damn child genius (which you’re working on). I think it’s a bit of an intersection of the two. You would school full grown adults on how to operate that thing. You know how to open it, slide between pages, get in to YOUR folder, in and out of apps, and even how to work your favorite apps.

You and daddy are pals. Not that you and I aren’t, but sometimes I feel like our parenting style is like a human mullet. He’s ALL fun and I’m ALL business. It’s not always like that, and you and I have our goofy, fun moments too. I love the relationship you have with him and hope it’s something the two of you hold on to when you starting hating me around your thirteenth birthday. You follow him in to his closet every morning and recently began demanding to play with his belt. He hands you one off the hook on the wall and you carry it around the upstairs. “Dad-dy belt” you tell me.

The two of you also WEEEEEEEeeeeEEEEE. When daddy gets home from work, it’s like playtime to the max. He holds your arms and swings you around and around and you say weeeeee the whole time. If he sets you down, you demand to “wee.” You also love flying with him; he’ll place your belly on his feet and sending you flying. You simply cannot get enough play time with him. It’s good for both of you.

We adopted your very first baby doll. After Ellie left hers at the house over the weekend and we saw how much you were adoring her, I realized that was one toy your arsenal was lacking. Every girl needs a baby! You went to Target with me and we selected a pretty standard cloth-body-plastic-limb doll. You loved her instantly, as if you’d always had her and you just had to go pick her up. She was instantly the favorite to take to bed, car rides, and play with.

You think things are funny. I know this because you tell me “funny!” The way you say it is even funny. Good thing, because you will not survive this house or this family (or let’s be real, this world) without a sense of humor. I’m glad you found yours early. Don’t ever let it go.

I know there are a dozen other stories I could tell you, but four months later, I’m just filling in holes for some very sparse notes I left myself. Life gets busy and priorities get shifited around. It’s no excuse, but it’s the one I have right now. I can’t tell you how important these letters are to me, and how disappointed I am that I let so much time get away from me. Sometimes I think these are my only chance of remembering all the amazing things you’ve done, and here I sit with a four-month gap. I might as well have left the country, or fallen in to a coma. (I don’t know where you get your dramatic personality.) I know I’ll remember the big stuff, but I also know I’ll forget the little ones. Like the lady at the store telling me she liked hearing you say mama. These letters are about capturing the little everyday things you do because they are magical and plentiful. If I don’t write them down, they’ll vaporize as quickly as the moments in which they exist.

I love you bug —

Mama

Alright you… who are you and what have you done with my baby? In general you’ve been a perfect little Paiser Pais this month. However, there have been days that make me want to pray to the Lord Baby Jesus for what awaits us when you turn 13… or 3. There was one evening in particular while eating your rice and beans at Chipotle (that they give us for free! Thank you!) where your attitude had taken such a turn for the worse that your dad dropped his fork, looked at me, and with all the astonishment he could muster said, “She’s You! It’s genetic!” Well, why it took him 16 months to figure out that your personality is a clone of mine I’ll never know, but what this means is that you and I have a stormy future in front of us. Hurricane Irene (google it) is going to feel like a dance in the streets on a rainy day, I fear, compared to the butting of heads and battling of wills that will take place in our home.

I say this not to be like, “Well, Pais, this was fun. You’re cute and all, but we’re bound to hate each other. Hugs and kisses, mama.” I say this because I grew up with all of that same angst, fury and battled wills with my dad. It made for very turbulent teenage years, a few adult years too. Even this morning when you sat with me in bed screaming NO NO NO NO NOOOOOoooOOOOOO because I simply wanted to hand your blanket to you (THE NERVE!) I just smiled. I know what it’s like to hate mornings, and to feel such frustration with your parent you want to grab your Seventeen Magazines and very best T-shirt and march out the door, and I will love you anyway. I know we’re going to fight, but I’m going to love you anyway. I’ll understand it, I’ll see through it, I’ll blame my genes, I’ll blame the hormones, and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, you will too. You and I have some monumental head butting ahead of us, but we’ll be OK.

When you aren’t throwing fits of rage because we’re trying to feed you, wipe your ass, or bathe you, you’ve taken up dancing. This time, you can blame your father for those genes. It’s either the weeeeee-spin-in-circles kind of dancing, or the drop-your-booty-to-the-ground-and-bounce kind of dancing. Both are equally adorable, and both put a huge smile on your face. You say “dance! dance!” while you do it.

We survived KoskiePalooza ’11 this month. Fourteen Koskies, two dogs, three days, one house. I was excited for your first big cousin visit, you were less than interested. You pretty much kept to yourself, playing quiet and dainty like usual. You got lots of Oma and Papa snuggles, rides on Grandma Polly’s and Papa Rudy’s scooters, even a few snuggles from Aunt Heather, and refused to give Uncle Keith the time of day. I think the big kids were a bit much for you, but next year, I think you’ll be ready to join the anti-sharing, hair-pulling, and general horseplayery that takes place in the den-now-playroom.

One of the big things that happened on that trip was how many times you told me you needed a diaper!! The first time I thought it was cute; the second time I thought it was an interesting coincidence that you asked at the same time you’d soiled your diaper; by the third request I was catching on. Upon our return to Wichita, you were the proud new owner of not one, but TWO, potty seats (One for each bathroom, of course.) We plopped your tiny hiney on that seat and you thought you were a really big deal. Heck, I thought you were a really big deal. LOOK AT MY BABY ON THE POTTY!!! We’re not forcing anything, we’re letting you lead the charge here. You frequently ask for new diapers when they’ve become dirty, and just this morning you picked up your potty seat while I was doing my hair, patted the real toilet seat, and said “Potty!” When you ask, we sit. The rest of the time, we just have elmo decor in our bathroom. Good job big girl!

We took a little road trip. Finally, just the two of us! It was completely uneventful, which is just the way I like them! It was a bittersweet trip. In July we lost Papa Nick to cancer. You never got a chance to know him, and I think you both missed out. He was a pretty funny guy, liked giving the granddaughters candy, and kept Grandma Ann mostly in line. You and I went to Grand Lake to help Grandma pack so she could move back to Wichita. We also got to spend the day and night with one of my best friends, Sarah. I hope you’re as lucky in life to have friends like her, the kind that stick around for years and feel more like sisters. You had a great time playing with Liam and Lydia and made quite a mess destroying their toy room. Then, we got to have a big birthday breakfast with Uncle Kyle and Aunt LaRenda; he ended up paying for all of us. Like how I worked that?

You seem to have a name for everyone these days. Your vocabulary knows no bounds, and I love hearing you discover new words, especially the ones you make up! Jenna is Nenna, Felicia is See-Shaw, Ellie is Eh-ee, Jessica is Ca-Ca, Grandma sounds like Mama but is definitely a little different, then there’s DADDY!, and Oma and Papa are down. Oh yeah, and Mama. I’m not gonna lie, the way you say it with your teeny tiny voice makes me fall in love with you every time I hear it. It is my favorite word of all of your words. There’s such emotion in it every single time.

My favorite change in your routine is our mornings together. It’s always been Cry > Mama Gets You > Daddy Gets Milk > We Lie In Bed > Everyone Falls Back to Sleep. Now, we lie in bed while you drink your milk and then you throw your arm out, pop me in the face with your zippy, say Done!, and then roll/crawl your way to my chest. You then climb on top of me, with your fuzzy of course, and curl in to a little ball on my chest and stomach, and fall back to sleep. And there we stay for 30 minutes, sometimes, an hour, sometimes more. I absolutely eat it up. It’s my favorite part of the day with you, as mornings have always been. Next week I go to New York for a week and I’m dreading the return home to find that you have some new routine and you don’t my snuggles any more. Then again, maybe you’ll need them more than ever.

I love you my sassy little bug.

Mama

Hey there Paiser Pais!

Or should I call you chatty cathy? You are just a non-stop talking machine these days. Some of my favorites are hiney, pretty, color, i sit, puppy, and knock knock. Last night I scooped you up and you squealed “I got you!” so clearly I almost dropped you from the shock. You can say the name of nearly every food you eat – avocado (acaho), watermelon (wallamalla), berries (bobbies), cheese, peas, bagel (gagel), apple, banana (nana), water, milk, cracker (ka-ka… not to be confused with Jessica’s name, also ka-ka).

You are fully obsessed with shoes. Certifiably on your way to be named Imelda Marcos of the year (you’ll need to google her). You want daddy’s off, you want mine on, you want to put them away, and if yours are on then the only logical next step is to head to the back door and leave. “Dye Dye!” you cheerfully remind us until we oblige or reason with you that we’re not leaving. Once you’re strapped in your car seat, it’s only moments before the mischievous tear of velcro fills the backseat. “ah!” you’ll say, letting us know you’re taking them off. Sighhhhh.

You really do love going bye-bye. No matter how rotten your mood is at home, I know it can always be fixed by going somewhere. You do so well in the car, and are generally very well behaved in public. You like going bye-bye so much that you practice it at home. Anything with a strap becomes your purse. While my purse, an obvious choice, is often used, you’ve also pulled bras, shoes, buckets, Target sacks, and more up on your itty bitty arm, turned to us and waved “dye dye!” and headed to the door.

You are growing to be quite a big helper. You think it’s a really big deal to take things to the trash. Diapers, paper, or even the end of food you no longer want, you proudly take it to the trash can and drop it in, then turn to clap and yell Yay!!! You also like to help me in the laundry room. I will pull one. item. at. a. time. from the washer and hand it to you. With each item I pass along you say thank you and then place it in the dryer. Then, you help me shut the door, and once again clap and say yay!

As of late, coloring is your absolute favorite activity. Something along the lines of “cuh-wuh” is said within 30 minutes or so of you waking up. You get so excited that your whole body will wiggle, and a big cheesy smile overcasts anxious fingers that just want to get ahold of a crayon. We’ve been brave enough to offer pens or markers in a pinch. In fact, you decorated many of our moving boxes on the way out of Sandplum over to Fountain.

Your hair is growing quite a bit. In fact, it’s long enough that (if you’d let me) I can put 1 ponytail in the back, 1 “spout” ponytail on top, or two VERY adorable pigtails. But you don’t allow this. You barely allow me to play with it, much less put a tie in. I’ve gotten you to participate a few times when I’ve asked “Can we make your hair pretty?” You’ll look at me with big eyes and say “pity?” and then back in to sit in my lap (swoon!). I spend the entire time going “ohhhh so pretty!” and reminding that “this won’t take long” just to convince you to sit still. The hair is definitely starting to curl and I have no doubt you’ll have a curly mop to rival mine by this time next year.

We learned how long one can go without a diaper. It’s about 5 minutes. The look on your face as you pottied on the bathroom floor was so concerned for what was happening. I reassured you that you’d done nothing wrong, and made a mental note not to let little naked baby bottoms run unprotected in the house after a bath, no matter how cute it might be. An inch back and it would have been carpet, so thank you for being a constant shadow and following me to the bathroom.

We celebrated your second Fourth of July this past month. It was a low-key yet eventful holiday. We lit sparklers, snakes, confetti poppers, and snaps on the Saturday before with Ellie, Grammie, See-Shaw (Aunt Felicia) following a big family BBQ. You loved all the colors and noises! Daddy was insistent on getting a few fun things from the fireworks stand to enjoy with you and spent the most he ever had on such things… a whole nine dollars. That night we went to downtown Wichita to see the World’s Lamest and Most Disappointing Fireworks Show EVER! But you didn’t care. You and Ellie played and played, and then took in the 6 minutes worth of booms and bangs, loving every minute.

The actual holiday we spent swimming and cooking out at Aunt Denise’s and Uncle Gary’s, with Great Great Grandma Morehead making a visit. You and I played in the pool, and you were more content to play in-and-out than to just keep your butt in the water. That evening was more fun and food at The Farmers where we stripped you down to a diaper and let you eat two huge slices of watermelon all on your own. You couldn’t have been happier!

You spent four days hanging out with Grammie, Nenna (Aunt Jenna), Ellie, and Aunt Felicia while daddy and I ran away to celebrate my 30th birthday in Denver. Paisley, when you turn 30, don’t fear it. Don’t stress about it. Just let it happen. I’ve spent weeks, even months, anticipating this birthday and it turned out to be one of the best I’ve ever had. We missed you like crazy pants while we were gone, but honestly enjoyed the break and uninterrupted four days to come and go and do whatever we pleased with Jeremy and Sarah without considering nap times, diaper changes, and the ease to take you some places over others. During our one and only Skype call while we were away, you were happy to tell us hi several times, and then got bored and wandered off to play with your BFF Ellie. Some day you really won’t care that we’re gone and that will make me more sad than turning 30.

We spent the last few days of this month packing and preparing for a move, a move I’ll explain in more detail next month. I wanted everything to go as smoothly as possible for you and now (the 16th of August, sheesh I’m behind!) that I’m looking back I think it has been. Not long before we moved you started saying “Home” whenever we would pull the car in at Sandplum. Only two weeks in to living in this new house and you said the same when we pulled in the driveway tonight.

The truth is, “Home is wherever I’m with you.” It’s something I’ve been telling your daddy for years, and a band (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes) finally put it in a song so I can put quotes around it and make the thought seem so much more profound.

I love you my little bug-

Mama

PS – are you ever going to grow? At your 15-month check-up you had only gained ONE POUND since your 1-year check up three months prior. At 20 pounds, you’re most definitely tiny bits and qualify for the 12% category. You are 30″ tall, and I’ve forgotten what percent that puts you. You’re not going to be a giant. You’re welcome.

Hey there funny little girl! Actually, silly, I call you silly girl quite a bit because lately that sums up your personality so much. You’re so playful and happy all (most) of the time. You make up funny little games, make funny little facial expressions, goofy little noises, and it’s pretty non-stop all day every day. We love it! In fact, can’t get enough of it.

You’re a twirler. We call it turning or spinning, but whatever you call it, you love to do it. Your daddy told me not too long ago “you used to dance all the time at random, but no so much any more.” I wish I weren’t so caught up in my own chaos to not let loose and just dance now and then. You aren’t caught up in anyone’s chaos, you just turn. You throw your right arm out across your chest and then follow its lead. You say “weee!” while doing it and never stop smiling. That’s one of those moments I wish I could put in a bottle so that one day, when the chaos does find you, I can say “Look… you used to turn and say wee because nothing else mattered. In that moment, that’s the only thing you cared about.”

I won’t even bother with the redundancy that your vocabulary is taking off, it took off a long time ago, and now we’re just trying to keep up. You walked up to Papa Kerry on a recent visit, stopped, pointed, and said “Paw-paw!” Kiddo, you made that man’s month! The name we somehow came up with for your blanket, “fuzzy,” you’ve adopted yourself. The earlier part of the month you started saying “see,” and then I realized it was the end of the word fuzzy. In the last week you’ve gone fully in to saying the entire word, and it’s darling. Your love affair with that blanket is second only to watermelon and your daddy’s shoes. When we ask you what color something is your answer, invariably, is yellow. I don’t care how red, blue, purple, or green something is, it is yellow. When I commented about this, your Great Grandma Rochelle said “Good Girl. Color the world to suit yourself.” I liked that a lot.

You’re starting to come up with sayings too, not just single words. My favorite are “nigh-nigh day-dee,” or “good night baby.” You pound the holy hell out of your little Curious George doll’s back as you try to mimic the way we put you down to sleep at night and tell you good night baby. It’s rather endearing and very funny. While you’ve been taking baths in the tub since you were about four weeks old, you have never said bath. But after taking quite well to our shower, you quickly learned the word and will take off running in to our bathroom, pry the shower doors open, and wiggle your hiney (another new funny word) hoping we’ll put you in it. You also say “I got you!” You little heartbreaker! It actually sounds like “got chu” something you learned from many games of chase where you always lose and don’t mind one bit.

Speaking of colors, that pristine baby white skin is gone, you’re now a suntanned summer baby. You are slathered in SPF 55 every time we walk out the door, so the good news is that you’ve never burned. Those pesky rays still find you and I won’t lie, I’m super envious of your complexion right now. Right down to the legs you never have to shave when you put on a swimsuit. And how your little buddah belly looks AAAAdorable in a swimsuit, and mine, well, let’s just say I wear a lot of sundresses.

You’re becoming quite the little water baby, which makes me happy! I’m (almost) 30 years old and something most people don’t know about me is I’m scared to death of pools, lakes, and other places full of hundreds of gallons of water where my feet can’t touch the bottom. I don’t want this for you. I want you to be comfortable in the water. We took you and Ellie to play in the Riverside fountains and you, at first, completely freaked out. But Grandma Lori and Ellie convinced you it was OK and you took to it so well you were trying to drink out of the sprays of water. We’ve been to two pools and you loved both, but prefer to be held versus placed in a floating device. Get a cocktail and an air mattress and your mind will change!

Then, there was the road trip, something I named #TripOfDoom. Seriously, I’ve told the story in full detail so many times that I don’t think I can muster the strength to do it again. Also, I don’t want my blood pressure to spike. In short, you and I took off from OKC one fine Saturday morning to spend four days in Dallas with Ada and Christie. Our first road trip together. Our first trip without daddy. We were having a freaking fantastic time! An hour and a half into the trip you passed out, and I said thank you to the universe because it would be smooth sailing the rest of the way. Then, our radiator exploded. We were stuck on the side of the road for an hour and a half, in 90-something degree heat, a toothless tow truck driver arrived and regaled me with a story of his daughter’s cherry (no lie), and then we took the car to the Ardmore Walmart … where it stayed for seven days. Seven long, frustrating, losing-my-cool, very expensive days. A car rental and one thousand dollars later the car went home. Some other stuff happened in between, but again with the blood pressure and wanting to one day be around to fight with you about prom dresses.

You put on your big girl panties this month. Another one of those bittersweet milestones. No more bottles. I was afraid to do it, you love your bottle. A bottle, fuzzy, and a mommy or daddy and you are in snooze city. One Saturday morning I brought you a sippy cup. I will probably not ever forget the look on your face. If you could have cussed at me, I believe the sentiment would have been along the lines of “WTF MOM!” In short, you were not impressed. You cried. You cried so hard and it broke my heart. But you were too hungry from 11 hours of fasting to argue the point much more than that, and so you placed the spout into your mouth and cried between sucks until you finally realized it was the same milk. The next few mornings went about the same until I finally felt it was safe to put your bottles in a Target bag and throw them in the “baby stuff box.” I’m more impressed that you haven’t sloshed milk all over yourself and us in the process. You’re a tidy sipper.

As we celebrate your 14th month, we also celebrate the five-year anniversary of BabyOrBust.com. I can’t tell you hard it is to believe that five years have passed since all of this started. One day I will tell you the whole story, if you don’t find it on the Internet first (which, by the way, is where I’d prefer you learn about sex, drugs, and math). When I tell you, I will cry. I’ll probably cry a lot. But they will be happy tears. Without this site, I honestly don’t know if we’d have you yet. A lot, A LOT, of people made you possible. I write these letters to you every month because I want you to hear my voice and how I remember this amazing time with you. But it’s also a small way for me to give back to the hundreds of people who played big and small roles in making you a reality, by letting them peek in at our life with you.

I say it every month, but every month it’s more true than the last, I’m having so much fun with you!

I love you so much, bug!

Mama