I was explaining to my aunt, who was here visiting this week, that without Tootsie, it would be easy for us--with two daughters eight and eleven years old--to each go our own ways: someone reading here, another on a computer there, someone at a friend's house, on a bike ride...but instead Tootsie is her own nucleus for the family, our touchstone. Everyone gravitates to her in the mornings when she wakes. She's the first one we ask for upon arriving home. Her antics and tricks are the center of our attention. And as she's a toddler, we know where she is at all times, in her best interests and ours.
Last year she felt like a hurricane to me in terms of magnitude on our lives. This year I recognize her as the eye to the hurricane we are, swirling around her and magnetically drawn in, a beautiful antithesis to entropy.
We took her on a few hikes and walks this week. She's almost running and jumping now, loving to walk on different surfaces and stopping to run her hands in the dirt (and to eat a rock or two) and to smell every flower. She practices words and phrases and signs some too, and when she doesn't know what else to say, it's "bee-baaa" or "baaa-beee." She dances to Sesame Street and Katy Perry. She's empathetic and compassionate and caring, giving loves and hugs to her cousins and friends and siblings and often teary on our behalves.
She's been sick the past few days with a high fever, sleeping and cuddling and breastfeeding around the clock. Our initial panic at her high temperature reminded me that she has been remarkably healthy since her time in the hospital. Our hearty, heart-full, happy girl.
We are so, so grateful.
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