When you were two you laid in a basket on the deck and stared up at the trees. You found a bird and you laughed. It was sunny, and you lay there being lazy and happy in the morning for nearly an hour while I put wildflower seeds in an envelope for next spring and nursed your sister.

You may not remember this when you grow up, or this may be one of your vague happy memories of childhood. I will remember this, though.

The summer where you really started talking all the time, where you learned to play your older brother’s imagination games, where you learned to love your sister. Where you snuggled up to us and said “I love you”, and when you insisted on sleeping in your brother’s robot pajamas. When your blonde hair grew Way Too Long because that was how you liked it. When you first swam in the “big” pool out back, and the first summer you splashed in the ocean, laughing in our arms as the waves broke against us. The summer when you lay on your belly in the sand on the beach and were simply happy being there for hours on end. The summer Gramma stayed home with us and you learned to speak Russian alongside English. The summer you went to camp two half-days a week and called all your campmates “play kids”, and the counselors too. This is the “best part of summer”. All of it. Because of sharing it with you.

❤ Mama