Dear Darcie, Can I Freeze This Moment?

Dear Darcie,

Being your mum is so bittersweet. I’m constantly torn between adoring you at the age you are now and wishing you could stay small forever and also being so excited to see your future. I write this blog and I document our lives on Instagram because I’m so scared of forgetting it all. Scared that I’ll remember the big details like your first steps and your first Christmas but forget some of the little details along the way. Like the way that you always smell faintly like strawberry yoghurt and the way that your little hand slots perfectly into mine as you skip down the road. I’m scared I’ll forget the first ever dance routine you made up (right leg like a flamingo, left leg like a flamingo, squat, twirl, tada!), the way you say DinosaurTops instead of Triceratops and how you pronounce water with a G.

I don’t want to stop time; I want you to keep growing into the amazing, wonderful person that you are becoming. But please, can I please just freeze this moment so I can keep it forever?

Can I freeze this moment and always remember the way that you are always just so scruffy? Especially in the mornings! Your bedhead falls over your face and your tartan pyjamas are so baggy around your legs and your tummy but so short at your ankles. You’re the most adorable mess I have ever seen.

Can I freeze this moment when all your worries can be fixed with an ice lolly and a cuddle? A bad day can be cured by the magic of a chocolate coin appearing behind your ear and there are few problems that a cuddle can’t solve.

Can I freeze this moment and never forget the way you ask for a ‘cuggle’ in your sweetest voice? More often than not you have an ulterior motive but I fall for it every time because there is never a single  moment that I want to turn down a cuddle from my girl.

Can I freeze the way that your teeth are just so goofy? Your smiles overflow with bright white teeth in the most endearing way. When your daddy and I first met he used to laugh at me for my ‘teethy smile’ and you have inherited that and made it so adorable.

Can I freeze this moment when you think that every instrument is a piano and every colour is pink? You know so many words and your vocabulary and understanding is second to none but you just find it hilarious to get the answers wrong. If I ask you what colour the sky is you will tell me it is pink but if I ask you to get me the red cup you always get the right one.

Can I freeze this moment when your imagination is so strong? When you can spend hours entertaining yourself running around pretending to be a helicopter or an ambulance or a dinosaur. When you love to make tea parties for your dollies and feed your teddies imaginary cakes. When you find it hilarious to pretend to eat up your baby brother and gleefully tell me he is ‘delicious’ (or ‘delitchious’ as you say!)

Can I freeze this moment when you insist I lay with you to fall asleep? I never begrudge you for that because my heart aches to think of a day that you won’t want me to lie there with you and you won’t put my hand on your back and cuddle in to fall asleep. And the way that we always hear your door open and your footsteps on the landing at 2am, and then you wander bleary eyed into our bedroom, still basically asleep and snuggle up with us. Your dad squished against the wall and me practically falling into Ernie’s Moses Basket, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those nighttime cuddles are the best, especially now we don’t get as many in the day while I look after your baby brother.

I never want to forget you in this moment. In this perfect two year old moment. Everything is hilarious to you and every day and every place is a new adventure just waiting to be had. I never want to forget how long and twig like you are in your clothes, the way you run stomach first and how you literally shake with excitement at the simplest of things. A cat on a roof, a parcel at the door, a chocolate behind your ear. I don’t want to forget how curious you are to learn, your delight when you say a new words and your stubbornness when you think you know best.

At this moment in time I find it hard to believe that I won’t miss two year old you. I find it impossible to think that you can keep getting more amazing with age when you are so wonderful right now. So kind, so generous and gentle. The best big sister despite being so small yourself. I don’t want to forget that right now you only call him ‘Ernie Bear’ or ‘Ernie Baby Boy’ because you’ve heard us say it so much that you think those are his names. The way you love to tell me he is sleeping at just the right pitch and volume that ensures you then get to say the words ‘Ernie awake Mummy!’. The way you hand him a toy and tell him to hold it ‘like this, Ernie baby’ and the way that you tell him off when he accidentally pulls your hair or kicks you with his baby toes.

Two year old you is my favourite you so far. I take a hundred photos and videos every day, too many to every look back on but it makes my heart content to know that they exist. That if I ever have a few years spare I could sit and look back through them all. I wonder if we’ll ever sit and look at them together, and say how like your own daughter you were, the same way my parents tell me that you remind them of me when I was your age.

You amaze me every day and it astounds me that you are just going to keep getting cleverer and wittier and more amazing as you grow. I hope you never stop doing your ridiculous fake laugh and I hope that you always want a cuddle with your old mum. I hope that I never forget how wonderful your squeaky little voice sounds as you warble along to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and that I always remember your fabulous ‘puppet voice’ when you put on a hand puppet and say ‘Hello, I’m the king of the castle’. I never want to forget how much you love hide and seek and that sometimes your idea of hiding is to stand behind me and say ‘right here, mummy! I’m right here!’ and other times you hide so well that I genuinely worry that you’ve somehow got out the house.

I could write down a hundred things that I love about you now that I don’t want to forget, and maybe I will. Maybe one day I’ll show you a list and you’ll roll your eyes and ask why I’ve bothered. Because I never want to forget how perfect you are at two, baby girl. I know you’ll still be perfect at three and four and even thirty four. But right now, two is the best and I will remember it, because in writing this down – I have frozen the moments.