Today, however you celebrate (or don’t), I hope you take a minute to yourself. I hope you take a deep breath, and exhale, and know one thing:

You are more than the extra labels that you may be painted with.

Take away the words working, stay-at-home, breastfeeding, formula feeding, attachment parenting, helicopter, free range, adoptive, crunchy, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Take away all those words, and the ONE label that is important is left.

Mom.

It’s the one word that ties so many of us, who are so different in so many other ways, together.

Mom.

And if you care about that label, if you are working in any way shape or form to live up to that label? No other label matters.

So celebrate yourself today, and all the other moms out there, no matter what their “extra” labels may be.

This is how I see you, most of the time.

Laughing, smiling, and a blur from wiggling and moving.

Some days I know I focus too much on the hard parts. Especially here. This place is where I work through my own feelings of failing, of my own feelings that I’m not enough for you, that I’m not doing what I should for you. Of frustration and challenge and doubt.

But oh, my boy, you are so much more than the challenges you bring. You are SO much more than the sum of my insecurity.

You are filled with the toddlerisms and funny appropriations of the things we’ve said in your presence. You say things like “How aboooouuuutttt…3?” in your best bargaining tone when we offer you one prune. You want to “hold Mommy’s turtles” (translation: shoulders) when we’re in a public bathroom and I don’t want you holding onto the toilet. You say “packpack” and “goggie”  and “hmmmmmm” and my favorite, “I lub you Mommy.”

You are filled with adventure and curiosity. You want to check out the spaces next, above, below, and on the side of the path. You want to see how things work. You want to climb up to see on the other side of things. You climb the big kid’s rock wall, and though I stand there beneath you, that’s more for me to feel like I’m helping than because you need me to be there. I have yet to find a thing that makes you afraid, and though I’m sure the day will come, your joy at trying to conquer life is awesome to watch. You have no fear and no trepidation and (once we can teach you safety) this will treat you well in life my little man.

You love people. You’ve never met someone you don’t like, and seem to seek out people who view you with trepidation. It’s not uncommon for you to wave and yell “Oh HIIII. HIIIII!!” to the one person in the crowd who has a scowl on their face–and you pretty much always get a smile and a wave back. You’ve been known to run up to strangers when we’re walking on the trail and tackle them in a hug (we’re working on teaching you when that’s appropriate. Luckily you’ve yet to pick someone who’s day you didn’t brighten immensely by that moment of pure openness). I hope you always find it in you to love the people around you this much.

You work so hard to figure things out and have such a sense of accomplishment when you do. About a month or two ago, we got these ABC and number flashcards (I don’t know kid, you like flashcards. Who am I to argue?). You take such pride in getting all the letters, and are working so hard on the numbers. Every car ride you ask “letters pease?” At least once a day, you say “numer cards?” You work and work at it, staring intently at those cards, until you can say with triumph “X! Xylophone!” This is just one of a million examples of your tenacity and desire to learn (on your terms, of course). I want you to always have this drive and pride at learning.

You, my boy, are so much more than I can put into words. You are funny and sweet. You are temperamental and persistent. You are loving and curious. You are tenacious and adorable and clever and strong and friendly and happy and the very best thing your dad and I have ever been given. For every moment that I struggle and doubt and worry and stress, you give me 50 where I laugh and learn and am in awe at who you are.

You are so utterly, amazingly YOU that I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around all your you-ness. You, my boy, are so, so much more than I could ever try to capture in photographs or words.

You are so, so much more.

Parenting isn’t what I thought it would be. Maybe because I was blessed with a child I wasn’t expecting, or maybe through a failure of imagination, or maybe (probably) because there is no way to really grasp what parenting will be like before you’re in it, my parenting experience has been thrilling and terrifying and heartbreaking and heartbursting and not at all what I expected.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I feel like my kiddo, light of my life and song of my heart, is a handful. I have questioned myself on countless occasions–why am I having such a hard time managing him, am I failing as a parent, why is everyone else having such an easier time? If his time as a newborn and infant was marked by thoughts of “hey, this isn’t THAT hard,” his time as toddler has been marked by thoughts of “oh my god, I am not the right parent for this kid.”

Admitting that I think that sometimes is hard. It’s hard to question yourself, especially when it comes to your kid. Especially when it comes to the one person on the planet that you want to be absolutely perfect for.

And yet.

At the same time.

I look at that boy and I know that he is making me a better person. He pushes me, pulls me, drags me to be a better parent. I cannot be complacent with him–he is an all-hands-on-deck child, one who requires full body and soul and mind attention. While my instinct is to sit, to be quiet, to watch and let the chips fall where they may his nature requires me getting up and getting moving and running and doing and acting and guiding. He needs me to be the action figure version of myself in every way.

I may not be the right parent for this kid, but he is doing his best to make me into the best version I can be for him.

Because he is the right kid for this parent.

I have never wanted to be better and  be more than for him. I want him to have the moon and the stars…and the best mom possible. I don’t ever want it to be ME who stops him, or holds him back, or makes him wish things had been different. I want to be the mom he deserves, and the only way to be that is to work at it.

The warmth on my face and shoulders may have come from the sun, but the warmth in my lap was better. A little boy wrapped in a towel, shivering from the hour he had spent flinging himself with joyful abandon into the not-yet-warm-enough-for-swimming Pacific, warming my legs even through the cool towel. The weight of him: curling into my chest, pulling my arms around him, nestled.  Content, for a rare moment, to sit and watch.

The day–the weekend–was a much needed salve to a wounded parenting psyche. The boy is challenging on good days and utterly devastating on bad. I wonder, often, if I’m enough of a parent for him, if I’m just screwing it all up. The tantrums, the defiance, the oh-my-god-if-you-don’t-start-listening-I’m-going-to-lose-my-mind, the battles, the pace…they all make me want to cry from the feelings of incompetence.

It had been a long time since we’d had a good weekend. Moments, hours, maybe even a single day here and there. But some magic dust coated the entire weekend, as sunlight and warm temperatures filtered through the windows and doors. The hours had been filled with family jumpy time in the living room, watching Finding Nemo on the floor exclaiming over DUDE CRUSH again and again, park time. Instead of 100 tantrums a day, we had 10. The whole family enjoyed breakfasts together, lunches, dinners. We were filled with giggles and laughs and smiles and hugs and happy.

That Sunday especially was so pitch perfect, so idyllic, I still wonder if we used up our quota of picturesque on that one day. There were naps in the sun and ticklefests for the whole family. There were high pitched squeals of delight over the simple joy of chasing the dog. There was quiet and still and calm as I enjoyed time to myself while the people and animals dozed.

After, we went to the beach.

Leash in one hand, toddler fingers in the other. Sand between my toes, sun on my face, a breeze whispering across my cheeks.

Exhale.

And then they were off. The dog leaping and frolicking with other dogs. The boy, barreling full-tilt straight into the bracing water, laughing the entire time. This beach has a little inlet where the waves are tamed, making it calmer and more comfortable for a boy of just over 3 feet tall. No fear, no trepidation, just barreling straight for the water. Laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.

You couldn’t help but laugh with him.

The water was COLD. But he would not be deterred. It was joy, unadulterated enormous all encompassing JOY. And he would not be put off. For an hour, he ran into the water. For an hour, he flew between land and sea and built a castle of joy around all of us.

And then, when he was finally tired and cold, he let me wrap him in a towel and sit him on my lap and he watched the dogs and the water and the people while I watched him. He drank in the beach and I drank in the happiness.

In the swoop of his shoulder, I see a glimpse into the future.

In the flourish of his gesture, I am transported to a distant, but too close, time.

In the way he cocks his head, in the angle of his leg crossed at the knee, in the way he sometimes sits, and even, occasionally, in the way he looks at me I see the march of time.

In the swoop of his shoulder, I see the man he could become.

Not the person…a glimpse of a body part doesn’t tell me if he’s going to be kind, or patient, or witty, or sarcastic, or good at math, or a bad driver. It doesn’t tell me if he’s going to be close to us, or if he’s going to push us away. It doesn’t tell me if he’s going to be happy. Would that it did.

But I see the physical outline of him. The ghost of time yet to come that shows me the hints of what he may someday grow into. The edges of the man he may someday fill out.

It catches me off guard. I turn around and where once sat my little man, I see a flash of this other man. He is familiar and yet absolutely unknown all at once.

It’s usually when he’s facing away from me, or when I catch him with his head turned, when there are no toddler grins or squishy cheeks to pull me back to the present. It makes my heart catch in my throat.

Not yet.

I’m not ready yet.

Don’t grow up yet.

Please, stay my little man longer.

It’s usually a FLASH…

And then the ghost is gone, and my little man is back. The man-to-be has disappeared back into the someday, and the toddler is standing in front of me in all his toddler glory. He’s playing zoom cars and climbing the sofa, all squishy cheeks and unruly hair with a toddler belly and squeezable thighs. And I smile, and gather him in my arms, and laugh, and push the specter of the man-to-be back into the future.