Addison walks.

It didn’t really happen out of the blue, though it is still a big surprise.

One foot follows the other and then all those days of standing and falling and waiting and trying come together, brewed to an off-beat perfection.

Addison walks. Amen to all that.

If you’d like to see footage of the amazing event, go here.

Now, we’ve got to run…I’ve got this toddler getting into everything!

Coco woke up this morning and the first thing she said is:

It’s sugar day!

Her French class is planning to make crepes. Each child needed to bring their filling of choice. I tried offering the healthier choices, and she wrinkled her nose at me.

Jelly? Honey? Maple Syrup?

I never buy white sugar. Though I cave into the bags of candy she gets from parties and let her store them in a little shelf in the refrigerator and pick a few out here and there. I refuse to buy white sugar. It’s my last stand against the wild winds of the sweets world. Coco knew we had a bag in the refrigerator left over from making the bloody fingers for Halloween. I even caught her a few times opening the door and just checking to see if it was still there.

My nannies have to bring their own. I provide all their food and even buy them bread when I don’t eat it the stuff. Gives me a stomach ache and is the one product that will simply reform in the shape of cinnamon toast and apply itself directly to my outer thighs.

Coco sat at the breakfast table and sprinkled two huge helpings of tapa dulce - it’s sugar in the raw form and actually has a few minerals left in it unlike white sugar, which has been cooked 37 times and all nutritional value thus shot to hell - over the “all-natural” millet rice cereal. Who can blame her? The cereal tastes like the box it came in.

She bounced to the kitchen and asked:

Where’s the sugar? Not the brown sugar - the white sugar.

I had put it in a little plastic container and then wrapped it in sugar. Ants will find it in three minutes if they sniff even the smallest openings. As I put it in her backpack, I do believe I saw Coco drool, just a bit, like a dog sitting at the feet of someone who’s just flipped them a charred burger and hopes for more.

I’m not sure if I’ve lost or won this sugar battle. One of Coco’s favorite snacks when she was little was avocado/date bocas. I’d cut avocados, which are really inexpensive in Costa Rica, and add a slice of date on top and spike them onto a toothpick. She loved it. Now she hates avocados and tolerates dates.

One day our kids will go off and eat any-old-darned thing they please. I was just remembering a few late college evenings when my friends and I would whip up batches of cheese kurds. Deep fried of course. My hope is she’ll get off to a bit better start than me and when she’s about to fry up her second batch of those greasy blobs of lactose, she just might have an apple instead.

Finally, after forgetting Pepo’s birthday for two nights in a row, we lit candles and sang to the tattered little stuffed elephant that Coco adores.

Although Pepo is officially five - or something like that - Coco deemed him to be two. I think she’s afraid if he ages, he might die, which has happened to a load of pets she’s owned. We planned a small party, you know the intimate kind where we invite a few close stuffed animals to join us for cake and ice cream. Then, we forgot.

She walked into her room that night and couldn’t believe how she’d disappointed her little elephant. I upped the ante of course and told her the next night we’d get out some masks and party masks and have even a greater time. Pepo surely understood.

The next night when she walked into her bedroom, we’d forgotten again. This time I didn’t get off so easy. She grabbed the shaggy, over-loved elephant and wept.

“Pepo! I’m so sorry. It was your birthday. He feels so bad. How could I forget.”

In moments like these, it’s pretty easy to see where the concerns of children, well at least my child, lie. Kids are terrified of many things. We’re just fooling ourselves if we think kids aren’t worrying about whether we’re going to die, or leave them in the cafe and drive away and never come back. It’s the nature of the “growing-up” beast. Yes, they are running and skipping and jumping about having a lot of fun. But there’s a lot of concern going on in their little souls. And I think we parents often do let them down, and when we do, children don’t always know what to do with their feelings.

Usually, we are letting kids down on a lot of small things that don’t really “matter” to us: Canceling out on the swimming pool; no sleep-over because they have a cold; no you can’t have a candy bar for dinner; and forgetting an elephant’s birthday party.

On the other hand, there’s the “biggies” we “do” to children - even in adult terms. We inevitably let them down: Divorce; lack of money; yelling at them; watching T.V. instead of playing Chutes and Ladders; and of course death.

As I watched Coco clutch Pepo, I knew there wasn’t much I could do. She’d disappointed her friend, and I decided it was probably a good time to experience the feelings of those of us who are on the “promise breaking end” of the relationship most of the time (i.e. adults).

We pulled it together and the next afternoon we had a luncheon for Pepo and all his friends. The kids wore masks and party hats and the moms watched. We lit a candle and sang Happy Birthday. No small triumph. Plus a party we’ll never forget.

Coco turned eight. I keep asking her if she’s six or four or seven.

Are you sure you’re eight? I asked the morning of her birthday and while preparing for the birthday party with her family and school mates.

She hunched her shoulders forward and rolled her eyes upwards as she returned to the calendar - as she has all week - to cross of THAT day. Her birthday. It had arrived.

Are you sure some aliens didn’t come and take my little baby away and replace her with this tall, girl with a growing vocabulary that likes to read and spend time alone in her room reading?

She leaped around the living room changing that she was eight, and it was her birthday.

I’m not so sure she wasn’t kidnapped and taken away, my little one. I reminded her of the pain - oh the pain! - I suffered to bring her into the world (a tradition carried on by my own mother). But I say it lightly, just to make her smile. I reminded her that she was bald until she was two, and we look at the photo of her third birthday when she and her nanny dressed up in Costa Rican dresses and twirled about. In the same amount of time it took her to turn eight, she’ll be sixteen and possibly ignore the fact that I even exist.

She chose Spirit the horse for her cake at a small party with her classmates. We watched the movie the other night and thought it was a good fit, for this eight year old girl has more Spirit than I realize and takes me on adventures that should be captured on film for the world to see.

Since the kids are off school, we take a few minutes before running out to “do” something. Today, I was taking the kids swimming and I mentioned I didn’t have any money. Which meant I didn’t have any cash and would have to stop at the cash machine. I thought nothing of it, and I continued chasing Addison around the dining room table.

A few minutes later, Coco waved a 2000 colones bill (about $4.00) in front of me. Have you ever had a moment so rich, so complete, you feel like you just crossed the rainbow yet when you pinched yourself, it hurt because you weren’t dreaming? This was that moment. In an instant I saw all that parenting work, all that beauty open up in front of me and drop to my feet like a treasure chest tipped open.

Coco gave me the money. She’d dug into her allowance stash and gave me the bill. At first I didn’t want to take it. Taking money from a kid? Then, I realized it was just as important that she had a chance to share when it wasn’t forced down her throat by me: Share with your brother; help your friends; can you get another diaper for your mommy? I took the money and said thank you and told her it was one of the best gifts I’d ever gotten.

That rainbow we saw last night did have a pot of gold at the end of it, after all.

We all have a feeling that when Addison finally hits his stride, he will then completely own the world. Or at least our world.

In just the last month, it’s been amazing to watch his legs get stronger and instead of falling on to his butt to sit down like a tree chopped at the trunk, he bends his knees and gently sits. Instead of choosing to scoot on his rear across the floor, he asks for a hand to hold so he can walk. And he walks by just holding one hand instead of needing to be supported by two.

We’ve all learned this game of patience in this game of extra chromosomes. It’s like a game of chess without a time clock. When it’s Addison’s turn, he gets as long as he needs.

Instead of sitting and watching his sister and I leave for her ballet class, Addison got up and stood by a table for support. I said good bye to him. He waved his finger at me in a little wiggle like a protective parent: No, no, no he said.  Coco cracked up laughing and asked kissed him on the cheek after she’d kissed him. He tapped her cheek and snapped a popping sound which always makes everyone around him either melt or roll with laughter.

Coco and I walked outside. She couldn’t decide which umbrella to use. It was raining quite hard. She turned to say good bye one more time to Addison. He wiggled his finger and smiled as he told her no, no, no. She laughed all the way to car.

He’s funny, she said.

Yes he is, I said, standing there in the rain and waiting for her to get in.

Addison can have a bad night sleeping with a snap of the fingers. For a few hours, there was no sound coming from his side of the bed. Then he started swallowing non-stop as if someone had turned on a little faucet behind his nose. I could tell it was uncomfortable for him. Every hour until two in the morning, he’d wake up crying or just give an out-right scream.

In the midst of feeling tired and not wanting to be a mother - or anything - and answer questions and make lunch, I saw this waterfall while I was out this morning. The sound never stopped and reminded me of the needs of my kids and how I am pulled over the rocks hour after hour. But down below the beating water, there is a calmer pool of water. I imagined diving in and letting the cascade hit on my back and the top of my head.

My attempt at an hour nap got me five minutes. Addison slept with me and just as I was dozing into that deep sleep that makes your eyes fly back in forth in REM heaven, he coughed. Water may be a strong force, but it’s got nothing on kids.

Barely a birthday goes by without a pinata in Costa Rica. When I was a kid it was just a distant legend I’d heard about happening at other people’s fancy parties. Now we have the choice of Nemo, Barney, Cinderella, Strawberry Shortcake or Batman. In “ecological ways” I always try to make it a little different. This one held bead necklaces, blow horns and some chocolate. Enough to look like a bounty when it split open from it’s fins. First Addy went at it with a spoon, then on to a bigger stick. We propped him against the wall. I think we could have put rocks in there and he would have been thrilled. Kids are just that easy.

Sixteen paper clown plates and nine matching cups sit on the kitchen table. I’ve got some balloons to blow up and a cake to buy. Addison dressed up for school in a smart white shirt (see how long that will last!) and walked holding his sister’s hand to the bus. Lucky me, I get to go and watch a special Mother’s Day performance at the kid’s school. When we return, it’ll be party time. Three years ago today, I reached out to touch the arm of my son. It felt funny. Even as drugged as I was from the emergency cesarean, I could tell something was different. The next time I awoke, I was told he had Down Syndrome. And so the ride began.

Addison will open his gifts. But I’m the one who got the big present. I am beginning to understand why I shed all the tears and worry and fear I felt in those first years. When any child arrives, the parents have a chance to say: O.k. I’m done being the selfish grown-up I’ve pegged myself to be, now it’s time to shed all that and be all that I can be. We’re drafted by the toughest army out there. The training is brutal and the mind games exhausting. With Addison it gets all mixed up. Though he speaks a few words all “jumbly” and garbled, he says more than I could ever hear. Though he doesn’t walk yet on his own, he’s taken me farther than I’ve ever traveled.

Last night, the nanny told me that on the third birthday the mood a child arises with in the morning will indicate what the rest of this life will be like. As I peeked over to Addison’s bed I felt like I was looking into a crystal ball. I want the past to be the past. Repeating painful lessons, which I seem to do over and over, is about as fun as dropping a hammer on each and every one of my toes. I want to be done with sleepless nights, hospital runs, bad relationships, petty thoughts, and putting off my soul’s desire for just one more year.

The bright sunlight lit up the room just enough so I could see Addison’s eyes staring back at me like a mouse peering from his nest. I tiptoed closer. He grabbed his feet and pulled them to his chest and smiled. He reached up and hugged me and snuggled next to my belly. I sang happy birthday to him and had a feeling it was going to be a very good life.

I’m not an old shoe at parenting, but I’ve been around this block now for about eight years. When did we all decide that children need to have humongous birthday parties at barn-like locations with boats and slides and nets and rock climbing and zip-lines? The entertainment is non-stop; the music so loud it reminds me of being a misfit college student trying to act cool and talk to my friends over the loud band between bopping around on the sweaty dance floor.

There’s no doubt the kids love it. Who wouldn’t it? Since Coco is getting older, she isn’t invited to as many. So she gleefully jumps in the car whenever Addy’s got a gig. At the first few parties I sat stiff in a corner, hoping I wouldn’t have to speak Spanish. If I can’t hear every syllable, I don’t get what’s being said. So I spend most of the time nodding, smiling, and making a good guess at what I should answer. Then while the kids bounce or swing around, I have to keep telling myself to NOT eat another one of those fattening, yet yummy little bocas the parents always get. (I don’t think I’ve outgrown the misfit thing.)

The theme party then carries over to a large cake, mounds of presents (that are opened at home), pizza or hot dog for the kids, and of course the finale - the piñata.

I accept these parties now, like I accept the rain. There’s parts I don’t like, but the kids have a ball. Addy’s third birthday is coming up. And since he’s stuck with me as a mother, he’ll be getting the balloons at home and the scoop of ice cream for a cake.

We skipped the piñata, which disappointed Coco. I reminded her she still had a bag in the refrigerator from the last party/parade/whatever full of sugary delights. Addison couldn’t take his eyes off the huge butterfly Coco decided to get on her face five minutes before leaving. The traffic had thinned. It was 6:00 and time to get ready for bed.

Party animals. We’re just party animals.