A Letter to My Nine Month Old Daughter

Dear Ava,

Today you are nine months old. You have grown so much since you were born, and it's been so much fun to get to know the person you are already becoming!

You have an empty diaper box that you love to push around the house. You slide it along the wood floor while you walk behind it. It's so fun to watch you getting ready to take your first steps, finding your balance, and developing the muscles in your legs.

Will I really someday run behind you while you learn to ride a bike, finding your balance in a new way, at speed? Will you really take that leap towards independence? Will I really be able to let go of the seat and watch you ride away? Away towards an ever expanding realm of self reliance?

On Wednesdays your mom goes to a bible study group while you stay in their day care. She tells me that every week you start to get wiggly with excitement as she walks you down the hall towards the room that the day care is in. You already have a nickname with the day care ladies; "The Motor", because you spend the whole time crawling from child to child, smiling and babbling at each of them. What a people person you already are!

Will you really go to school someday and make new friends on your own? Will I have to come out to the family room in the middle of the night to tell you and your sleep-over friends that it's time to stop giggling and go to sleep? Will you really graduate from high school someday, and possibly go to college? Will I be able to keep up with what you're studying? Help you with your homework? Encourage you to keep going when you fail, and adequately celebrate, or even understand all of your successes? Will I be able to humble myself enough to ask you questions when you begin to understand more about subjects than I do?

Lately you've really been enjoying various "horsey" games where your mom and I either ride you around on our shoulders or bounce you on our knees. Once in a while I like to buck you off and catch you and then kiss and tickle you. You laugh and laugh and then ask for more.

Yesterday I was getting tired and had to put you down, but you weren't done playing. Your lip came out in a pout and you started to cry, as if you were being abandoned. It broke my heart to see you cry from disappointment, but it secretly also pleased me because what you wanted was more time with me.

Will you really have to endure that first, unbearable heart break when your first love inevitably lets you down? Will you really have to suffer through the feelings of rejection and abandonment that life so brutally surprises all of humankind with? Will I be able to offer you a quiet shoulder to cry on? Be able to listen to and feel your pain with out trying to fix it? Will I be able to watch you learn those hard lessons in life and remember that they build character and compassion? Will I be strong enough not to want to kill the boy? Will I remember to set aside what I'm doing so that you can have more time with me?

Today, on your nine month birthday, you started walking around the perimeter of the coffee table, carefully stepping sideways while holding on to the edges. What an exciting and frightening development! You are such a physical and mobile child! What, exactly, is your rush, little girl?

Will I really be walking you down the isle someday while you're holding on to my arm? Will I really have to try and hold it together while a preacher asks me to give you away? Will I really be able to give you away?? Please don't be in a rush, little girl.

Certainly you will always remain nine months old. I'm sure that all these things, and much, much more, will happen, and you will grow up to be an amazing and wonderful and capable woman. But to me, in my heart, certainly you will always remain my nine month old little girl.

I love you and I'm proud of you already.

-Dad