you were already loving this baby before we ever met
before we met youYou were already a mother before there was ever a baby in your arms, and I had already seen it in the way you loved JJ, Sophia, and everybody around you.
still my favorite person to be this close to
my Baba.
You made room for all of it, and somehow made it feel like it belonged.
You came into my life and made space for everything that was already there, not just the easy parts or the version of me that had everything together.
You cared about Sophia, my family, my friends, and the people I loved because they mattered to me, and you never made any of it feel like baggage. You kept making room until all those separate parts of my life started feeling connected.
That is one of the first things I loved about you: you did not just love me, you took the time to learn my whole little world and care about it too.
You came in
and made room for everything.
From day one, it felt like you took some quiet responsibility for my heart. If something hurt, you wanted to make it better. If something was wrong, you wanted to understand it. And that care never stopped with me. It reached Sophia, my mom, Mamita, my brother, my friends, and the rest of my family. You loved the people I love because they mattered to me, and eventually they became yours too. I do not think I will ever be able to explain how much that means to me.
This might be my favorite version of us, because it is the one that feels the most like home.
I could do this forever.
Sitting around watching trailers, snacking way too late, talking shit, and laughing at things that would make absolutely no sense to anybody else is probably my favorite kind of time with you, because somehow doing nothing together still feels like exactly where I want to be.
probably right before one of us said some bullshit
Nothing has to happen for me to enjoy being with you; I just like being around you.
the way I understood love, because you never just cared about me; you started caring about everything attached to me too.
the stupid normal nights with trailers, snacks, talking shit, and laughing at something nobody else would understand. I never want life to get too busy for that version of us.
I also love the way you take in the world, because you rarely seem content to move through it half-awake.
A book, a place, something we ate, a show, a person, or some completely different subject neither of us was talking about five minutes ago can catch your attention, and when it does, you actually pay attention to it instead of just letting it pass by.
You have taste, curiosity, and your own opinions, and you always seem to want the context behind things: why something is good, how it works, where it came from, what else is out there. You are not impressed just because somebody tells you that you should be.
That is one of my favorite things about talking to you, because there is always another angle, another thing you noticed, or another rabbit hole you are willing to go down. You are kind of a connoisseur of everything, and I love that the world never seems small to you.
I love your mind because it is so completely yours: curious, opinionated, open, and always reaching for something else to understand.
you have taste, curiosity, range, and your own opinions, and you do not just take things in; you pay attention, ask why, and always want to know what else is out there.
all of this, plus the attitude. I love about eighty-five percent of that.
Somewhere in all of that, without either of us announcing it, we became a team.
There was no single moment where everything suddenly changed; it was more like you kept becoming part of my life until I stopped being able to imagine it without you there. You became the person I wanted to tell things to first, the person I wanted next to me, and the person whose opinion mattered to me even when I absolutely did not want to hear it.
We learned each other, annoyed each other, took care of each other, and figured out routines without ever deciding they were routines. We made plans, changed plans, stayed up too late, argued, laughed, ate, watched things, talked shit, and slowly made a life out of regular days.
Before anything else got added to our life, that already felt like enough to make me feel lucky.
the belief that I could do this again, be a dad again, be a better partner, and build a family while actually feeling ready for it.
Then came bloob, and everything got bigger in a way neither of us could really prepare for.
Look at
what we made.
Then the things we had talked about started becoming real: a healthy baby, a home, the monkeys under one roof, and all our routines slowly turning into family routines.
bloob
bloobIt was the first little proof that the future we had talked about was actually on its way.
I will always remember how much you carried here.
you carried so muchI watched you carry so much through all of it, with more strength than I probably understood in the moment.
look what we fucking made ❤️
bloobAnd then there was this little face, and suddenly bloob was here.
And now this is just life: baby stuff everywhere, the monkeys, our things all over the place, and our home actually being lived in. I love that what once felt like a future we were trying to reach has quietly become our normal.
09.28
Happy birthday, Baba.
Happy anniversary to us.
whether all the love we pour into everybody else means there is less left for you, because there is not.
My Baba.
And after all of that, there is still one thing I want you to know clearly: I am still obsessed with you, and I never want the size of our life to make that harder for you to feel.
And I mean you, not just mom, not just the one who fixes things or makes sure everybody is okay. I mean Shalita, my Baba, the person whose attention I still want, the person I still want next to me when everybody else is asleep, and the person I still think is stupid gorgeous. I still want you to feel like there are moments when there is nothing but you in my head.
I love that our life got bigger, and I love the baby, the kids, the home, the noise, the responsibility, and all of it, but I never want the size of our life to make you feel smaller inside of it. Before every title we picked up along the way, you were my Baba, and you are still the person I want, not just the person I built all of this with.
I can look around and see what we built, and I can see you in every part of it, but as much as I love all of that, I still love you separately from everything you do for us.
So today I get an excuse to overdo loving you a little, which, according to me, is exactly what I should be doing anyway.
I am proud of you, I am proud of us, and I am still really fucking happy I got to snatch you up.
Happy birthday, Baba.
Happy anniversary to us.
I love you more. ❤️