The first two years of a child's life are always magic and beautiful and all that jazz. Everyone knows that. Babies are precious—rolling on the floor, sleeping on our chest, cooing at our idiotic attempts to baby talk at them when they're trying to force a poop out. Hell, even the relentless gauntlet of changing diapers takes on a peculiar air of poetry when it's our own tiny creation making all that blowout mess.
Then, before we know it, that first birthday party brings a tear to our eye. Look how much they've grown, we tell each other. Look at what we made. Before we know it, they start walking across a room toward our open arms and suddenly we are overcome by the extraordinary majesty of all this life going down before our very eyes.
No one can argue that the first couple of years of our child's life are unlike any we've ever experienced before. No one. But then along comes 3.
Nothing can prepare you for that, for 3
It was my first real glimpse of my youngest son's uniqueness
A little boy loving fire trucks is as old as the damn hills and I know it, but when it's my own boy, my own flesh and blood, my heart races harder as I hear him freaking out back there, his tiny voice breaking the daily monotony of running errands.
"FIRETWUCK!!!" he hollers. And we all feel his spirit lifting us up. We all get caught up in the spotting of a truck that hasn't ever really done much for us before. My other two kids never cared much about fire trucks at all. This is Charlie's thing. It's all him and we know it now. We smile as he scares us with his sudden shouts when he spots one on the road. We can't help it.
It's a thing without a name
Our brother, our boy, loving a thing he can't even explain. Which makes us love it too.
Age 3 is when you see a kid's face become a face that someday, a long time from now, you will look at sitting there across from you in the backyard, chomping on a burger, maybe sipping a beer, and you will recognize the same exact tiny cheeks and sparkling eyes and shining smile that you used to watch in the rearview mirror.
You will watch them eating their dinner, your now-grown child completely oblivious to your careful stare, and if the conditions are just right, if you wait long enough and watch closely enough, you will see the same exact pop of joy cross their face that you used to anticipate once upon a time. Back when you would roll up on a fire station, slowing down as you passed the open doors, just waiting for the magic you knew was coming—a magic that your knew was about to unleash itself in one beautiful burst of 3-ness.
Magic you still remember like it just happened yesterday.
