Dear Baby Girl, Today was my second Mother's Day since I got to kiss your sweet, munchy face. I think this day causes many people to take stock of all of the mother figures in their lives, but for your mother it is a day of a low-pitched anxiety as to whether she remembered to call all of her mother figures (and there are, gratefully, many) before 10 p.m.

What I did take stock of today, though, is how much you love the teeter-totter. As you grip tightly with your little play-dough fingers, your cheeks spread wide into doughy biscuits that cause your eyes to scrunch up in delight. You love the bobbing up and down, the looking back at me or Daddy or Playground Friend doing the same in syncopation.

But you also love the figurative teeter-totter, and that has made this season in your life a little bit exhausting. You teeter between giggles and tears, between independent and clingy, between busy busy busy and super snuggley. You are oscillating between sprinting down hallways and bumbling down them like a drunkard. And your moods. You trade them like a stock broker in the pit on Wall Street.

I had a lot of thinktime today, what with Daddy not having to see any patients and letting me nap and lounge and eat a lot of leftover raspberry brownies, and all those thoughts have culminated in the following: I am also on a teeter totter with you, and even though it is often difficult to fight the urge not to hold you too tightly on this ride, I take heart knowing that God is steady and constant and He is always good. His grace is sufficient for me as I am learning to be your mother.

Thank you for this last year - what an awesome series of ups and downs and sloppy dismounts it has been with you on board. Daddy and I love you a heart-burstingly great deal.

It has been a Happy Mother's Day. Thank you, Baby Girl.

Love, Mama

*** Brunch was better than these diletants would have you believe.