Tomorrow morning, I am getting on a plane to go to Minnesota. Rural Minnesota. Well first I'm going to Minneapolis, but then we're driving to rural Minnesota, a phrase I've been saying a lot in the last few days because it invariably makes people blink a few more times than necessary. For some reason, if you say you're going to Minnesota, people don't take you seriously. Throw "rural" in there and you've got them.

I'm going to see some friends. Three of them have blogs and then there's another one who persists in not having a blog but did get on Facebook recently, provoking gasps of astonishment across the country. This monumental event will be only one of the many things I am sure we'll be discussing at length.

Last year, Kate came on this trip with me as a crawling one-year-old, and this will be the first time I've been away from both she and Dan at the same time in two years, I realized today. Kate and I have gone on trips alone, and Dan and I have gone on trips alone, but I haven't gotten on a plane by myself and gone anywhere in two years. I've got three good books and I plan to stick my nose in them and steadily ignore everyone between here and The Land of Lakes. It sounds mean, but when you travel with a toddler who is outgoing, you have to talk to everyone in the airport all the time without ceasing and it is exhausting. I pretty much spend a solid day in whatever silence a lot of Sesame Street and graham crackers can buy me after one of our trips. So even the plane ride will be a real treat.

The year that has come between this friend reunion and last year's has been ... well, I guess momentous is a word for it. There has been great joy and heartbreaking loss and much prayer and there will be a lot to talk about. A lot.

Mostly I am looking forward to being with my friends again. When people have known you for as long as these girls have known me (fourteen years or so), there's a certain relief to spending time together. I don't feel like I have to explain myself at every turn for fear of being misunderstood. In newer friendships you spend a certain amount of time, years in most cases, just laying the groundwork to understanding each other. That's good and valuable work, but it can be hard work.

Once you've done all that work though, a friendship is really worth hanging on to. Even if it means doing the hard work of traveling to rural Minnesota and sitting on a porch with a lake view and a hot tub, enjoying the crisp fall-like weather and cooking glorious good meals. Yep. Hard, hard work, I tell you. So here we go.

Dear Kate,

Today you are two years old. As I write this you are busy picking out your clothes for the day, which will apparently consist of a swimsuit coverup and a pair of sandals that really don't fit you any more. (Update: Now we've moved on to your new big girl velcro tennis shoes and a pink polka dotted outfit your Grammy sent you. We'll see how long that lasts.) Changing clothes and shoes is a big deal with you right now. Leading ladies in musicals go through fewer costumes changes in a day than you. And they can dress themselves, not that you aren't trying. Half the frustration in your life right now is about the fact that you can't handle buttons and zippers, but at this rate, you're going to have it all figured out by next week. Practice makes perfect and all.

You just got done spending four days with your Daddy while I was visiting with some friends in Minnesota. It was the longest time I've been away from you as well as the longest period of time you've spent alone with your dad, and I think you fared considerably better than I did. Based on Dan's report, it seems you were totally cool about the fact that I just got on a plane and left you for four days, whereas I had to stop talking to you on the phone when I would call home to check in because it made me feel so homesick to hear your little voice. I do think you missed me, because you were really excited to see me when I got off the plane yesterday evening, and squealed and danced and hugged me. You looked bigger to me and you knew a handful of new words, all in just a few days. That's really what it's like with you right now. Every day you learn something new or say something new. It makes it hard to remember what you were like even a few months ago.

This month, you have picked up a new hobby for me to supervise: Waiting for the garbage truck. On Fridays, the city dump trucks come to our neighborhood to pick up the trash, and this is the highlight of your week. If you were content to watch this amazing event from inside the house, that would be one thing. But that will not do. Not even close. So every Friday morning at about 7:30, we start camping out in the driveway to make sure we don't miss the truck. As soon as you hear the truck, which with your super-sonic hearing can happen when they are still blocks and blocks away, we have to go outside and start our vigil. I have learned that on Fridays, I better get my coffee ready to go and put on some decent clothes first thing, since we'll be greeting the entire neighborhood in the course of this little ritual. I think you are developing quite a following on our block, because all of our neighbors are getting in their cars to go to work around that time in the morning, and people take great pleasure in checking to see what you're wearing that day and waving to you as they drive by. You love that. But it pales in comparison to the fact that the garbage truck drivers not only wave to you from inside the truck, but one of them now honks his horn for you. I am not sure the other residents are appreciating that so early in the morning, but you are beside yourself.

The downside of this is that the city, having recently added recycling pickup services to the garbage routes, now sends two trucks, and they each go down the street twice so as to pick up the cans on both sides of the street. That means that we don't just have to wait for a truck to come once. No, we have to watch the truck four times in a morning. It becomes quite a production. I have started bringing breakfast. And a book. Because you never get tired of waiting. If anyone in the Albuquerque area wants to drop by for a chat, I have a couple of hours blocked off every Friday morning between 7:30 and 9:30. Come on by.

Back to your birthday: Really, you've been getting presents for about two weeks already, since I smuggled home some loot for you from your Gam and Geez after our trip to Mississippi and your Grandpa brought some gifts out on behalf of himself and Grammy during a recent business trip. Among those was a pink plastic doctor's kit with miniature doctor tools, including a fat plastic syringe that you have used to give your baby doll about 200 shots a day ever since. Apparently, you are very pro-vaccination, or perhaps you have just been watching too many news reports about swine flu. Either way, I doubt that poor baby doll is going to get sick any time soon.

Later today, we're going to have a little party for you, just the three of us. Strawberry cupcakes are on the menu, and your daddy is getting you a bunch of helium balloons on his way home from work. Your Gam and Geez sent you a bunch of new dressups (Fairy wings and tutus. I have a feeling I know what you'll be wearing to church for the next three weeks.) and your Grammy and Grandpa sent a little step stool, which you are going to love because it will enable you to climb up and "help" me with things in the kitchen. I may never get anything done again. Your Dad and I bought you an enormously tacky Dora the Explorer toddler-sized backpack that has wheels on it and a handle like a little suitcase. I would have preferred something without a cartoon character on it, since you don't even know who Dora is, but on the other hand, Dora has a monkey, and you are going to think that is just the coolest thing ever, so I got over myself and bought it.

Reflecting on the last two years with you is so surreal, mostly because I find it hard to remember that you haven't been part of our lives forever. I think I knew, holding you in that delivery room that night, that things wouldn't ever be the same. Everyone tells you that, and I didn't doubt it. What no one could ever have made me understand was just how much we would love you, how much being your parents would require of us, and how profoundly we would be changed in the process. It's probably a good thing I didn't know, because I would have been even more terrified than I already was. But if I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be this: "Relax. This is going to be the most fun you've ever had in your life."

And it has been, Kate. Happy birthday. I love you so much.

Mommy

I never intended to take a blogging break, but two weeks after my last post, it's clear that's what I did. My apologies. I may have an explanation for that, but for now, I'll just jump in with a few random notes to see if I can remember how to put a sentence together.

1) Not to start any rumors, but today for about ten minutes I was convinced that Lenny Kravitz must have died. Here's how that happened: I got back in the car after Kate and I had joined some friends at the zoo and couldn't find my i-Pod. I figured it was buried in my purse somewhere (which it was) so I turned on the radio instead. First channel was playing Lenny Kravitz. Not the biggest fan, so I skipped to another station, which was also playing Mr. Kravtiz. Third channel --- ALSO PLAYING A LENNY KRAVITZ SONG. Maybe I don't fully appreciate the Kravitz genius, but at the moment, the only possible explanation I could think of for this phenomenon was that he had died suddenly and I had missed the news, kind of like how I figured out Michael Jackson had died when "Bad" was being played everywhere I went one afternoon. When I got home I actually got online and checked CNN to see if I had missed something regarding Lenny, but he's fine. I'm sure you're relieved.

2) This is the time of year when I remember why I love living in Albuquerque. We just had a cold front come through, and the weather today was crisp and beautiful. In two weeks, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta kicks off, and Dan and I are probably looking forward to taking Kate to it more than we've looked forward to anything since we saw U2 in concert. This is what parenthood does to you, but I'm telling you, she is going to freak out. The highlight of her life right now is when we drive somewhere early in the morning and see hot air balloons in flight, which we do frequently since that's a big hobby in New Mexico. Seeing several hundred of them at once is going to be the greatest thing she's ever imagined, assuming we can convince her to get off the school bus we'll ride to the field from the Park and Ride lot, which is going to just rock her entire world, she's so in love with buses and trucks right now. I don't know if toddlers are the target audience for this event, but mine is going to be ecstatic. Thank you, Albuquerque. We have kind of a love/hate thing going on, but in October I heart you.

3) Our dryer is broken. Well, actually it's not broken, you can still turn it on, but when you do, it makes this AWFUL noise like WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH that has progressively gotten so loud that I am now afraid to turn it on for fear it's going to spontaneously combust. A repairman is coming tomorrow to assess the damage, but we're on Day Three since the laundry stopped getting done, so some of us are wearing ... interesting outfits. Dan and I are actually OK, but because Kate's outfits have an average life span of about three hours before they have to be washed, she's down to just about nothing. So today I did a load of her many many pink clothes and they are air drying all over the house. At least that's the idea. What's actually happening is that Kate is going around pulling them all down and trying to put them on. What can I say? She loves her clothes.

4) We are going to this wedding in three weeks and I am so happy! Kate also is in a state of near-hysterical excitement, because I stupidly told her there would be dancing at Hannah and Daniel's wedding, and now every time it comes up, she says "Hannah Daniel wedding dance! Dance! Dance!" And then she gets mad that we aren't dancing at the wedding right this minute. So heads up Hannah and Daniel, I don't know who is in charge of the music, but they better be prepared to bring the party, because Kate is ready. I'll try to keep her from dancing during your church ceremony.

5) Note to self: Write embarrassing rehearsal dinner speech for sister's wedding. Include photos.

6) I'm afraid I'm going to forget this if I don't write it down. The other day we were eating spaghetti at the table, and around the same time, Dan and I looked up to see Kate dropping spaghetti down the front of her shirt. "No! No! No!" we said And she looked at us and said "Pockeet!" Now I am wondering where my kid got the idea that the front of your shirt is a pocket. I suspect that she has been observing the popular New Mexico practice of large women using their bras as a place to hold their cell phones. (I'm not even kidding.) This is probably our fault for taking her to Wal-Mart, but I'm not sure why she decided spaghetti would also be an appropriate things to put down there. Now she's obsessed with having "pockeets," and I keep finding weird stuff that has fallen down the front of her diaper after she dropped it down her shirt and totally forgot about it.

So I think that covers some of the stuff that's been going on around here lately. I promise some real substance soon, or at least what passes for substance on my blog, and hope you're all doing well. Maybe I will come over later and use your dryer and you can tell me about it.

Since Kate got a step-stool for her birthday, she's been obsessed with finding reasons to use it. We keep it in the bathroom, so this mostly results in her spending a lot of time washing her hands and brushing her teeth. I'm OK with both of those activities, but it gets kind of boring to stand there and just watch her piddle around with the water. I've started bringing a book, because we can be in there for up to a half an hour. Still, she makes some pretty hilarious faces when she's brushing her teeth. Dan caught a few of them with the camera the other night, so here they are, mostly for the grandmas, who I know are about to come out here and thump me on the nose if I don't post some new photos soon.