Dear Baby K,
Yesterday was your Baby Shower but I doubt you knew the party was for you. I imagine you probably felt that there were lots of voices and more excitement than usual, given that your Mom has spent much of her time incubating you laying flat in a quiet place. Additionally, she spent much of your incubation throwing up in every conceivable inconvenient location a human can vomit, I tremendously look forward to reminding you of this when you're 16 and a rebellious teenager that throws up after too much cheap whiskey at a high school party. That's right Baby K., I'm already relishing in the smug adulthood moment where I can to inform you that throwing up is the worst but that it is much, much worse when you know you did it to yourself. Your mom has handled her maternity illness like a champ while simultaneously counting down the days to your arrival. I have asked you kindly a number of times to please arrive before I leave for Europe and I am very serious about this request. Be on time or else. Mind you, I have also asked you a number of times to stop making your Mom so sick and you really didn't listen to me on that one. Arrive on time, Baby K. I want to be one of the first people to hold your little tiny body, to marvel at your little fingers and toes, to tell you how beautiful you are, and to witness for myself the incredible hybrid of genetics and love that form the being that is you.
Yesterday at your shower I sat next to your Mom and filled out the list of gifts you received, likely items that you won't ever remember. With any luck your library will be with you for a long time and you can continue to read and delight in those books (spoiler alert: I got you the Panda book and also the Travel the World book, your two new favourites) but the blankets and diapers and toys and things that will make your Mom and Dad's life easier will be beyond you. Probably until you're my age and your friends start having children and you'll realize suddenly, completely, someone did these things for me and you'll be temporarily overwhelmed by love and the essence of time spent living will wind you.
Baby K. I wrote the card to you yesterday because it's you we are celebrating, it's you we are looking forward to, it's you we are waiting in wonderment for. I don't think I understood how special of a moment this really is until a little over five years ago another very amazing and special friend had her baby. When her baby I arrived I sat in her living room and held the tiny girl, with a full head of black hair and cried, because I couldn't believe that I loved my friends baby as much as I did. Now that girl is five and full of questions, thoughts, personality and I know this will be the same for you. All my friends that have produced offspring in the past few years and what has surprised me the most is the depth of love I felt for them, for you, these children of the people I love. I wait for you, Baby K., knowing that when I hold you I will love you, too.
I've known your Mom for an astonishing fifteen years. We spent a tremendous amount of time together in one of the most formative time of our young adult lives. Your Mom and I once got lost in a forest in Estonia, and we alternated singing Disney songs and Snoop Dog until we found our way back to civilization. Your Mom once convinced a taxi driver to drive us an hour into Warsaw in the middle of the night from a suburban bus station, she taught me all the lyrics to Kanye West's album College Dropout when he was relatively unknown (and we subsequently practised singing it on our entire ski trip long weekend), your Mom and I were the winners of Shotgun Beer Relay race at Kinesiology Games in Montreal, your Mom and I mailed our winter jackets home from Amsterdam in April one time because we got too hot walking around and thought it would be a good idea (they arrived in July that year). Your Mom taught me about 3/4 length cut of sweatpants and the joy of going to sleep immediately after a big meal, why Coke is actually an awesome soft drink and how to stick up for yourself at work in a room full of men. Your Mom and I can appreciate the simple joy of drinking wine in our sweatpants (3/4 of course), girls-only camp weekends, banana boats and the complex joy of long haul travel, road trips, blowout birthday parties and extravagant nights out. Your Mom taught me to live a little more light hearted and listen to music REALLY LOUDLY in the car, she taught me tenacity and how to be brave(r) and not to give up on things like work and life and people when I really, really want to.
Your Mom blessed me with experience, friendship, patience and kindness but she has given me many other wonderful gifts too. In short, the human forms you've chosen for parents are really exceptional ones. I look forward to coming over and hanging out with you so your Mom can have a little break, I look forward to watching you progress and rolling over, sitting up, crawling, taking steps, running, talking. I look forward to watching you grow and change and become who you are.
This reads more like a love letter to your Mom (and I love her and your Dad tremendously) but it's mostly a love letter to you. Welcome, Little Baby K., it is already so exciting to be part of your life.
Now arrive on time. I mean it.
Awe Baby K! This is so beautiful to read, again months later. Well as it turns out, Cohen continues to be stubborn and does everything his way (including arriving to this world on his own time and in his own way- determined once he made up his mind). Cohen loves his auntie Holly and shows it with his big smiles and leg kicks (hopefully the leg kicks disappear as he gets older and stronger :P)