Simple Gifts

Your language development continues to astound me. In the space of a few weeks, you've gone from the occasional two-word phrase (most commonly, "Guys, shhhhh!" for squabbling cats...) to regularly stringing words together to try them out. "Daddy home back soon" and "bye see bit" are common, along with little phrases like, "Flop puddle" (from a pig in a story) and "Fluffy tail," but this evening, just before bath time, a big storm moved through. The sky got dark, thunder was rattling the windows, and the front door was open when the rain finally started pouring down in that wonderful white noise rush that a hard rain brings. I took you over to the door and was talking to you about the rain, explaining that it came from the clouds (you know roughly what they are) and that it's the way that the grass and the trees and the flowers get a drink. You worked all these words over in your mouth like marbles, rolling them around and trying to fit them together in various ways, "Trees water drink rain, grass drink water flowers," and just on and on, trying out all the ways they could go together. You were just fascinated, by the downpour and the noise and the idea that the earth was getting a drink. I pulled a box over for you to sit on so you could see out the door, and you just perched there, peeking over the kick panel of the door, watching the rain and talking to it. After awhile, you slipped down, rooted around for a book, came back, scrambled up on your box, and sat, just listening and reading to yourself, like you wanted to be near the rain. Your peacefulness is a beautiful thing to behold and such a gift to all of us....

Heart on Legs

You walked yesterday. You were kind of like Dumbo with his magic feather and just forgot that you couldn't do it all on your own and took off! Then you immediately sat down. I tried to coax you into doing a little more of it, but mostly, we had a game that involved you speed crawling across the living room and giggling like a maniac while I darted away from you and tried to get you to walk back to me. But that's not why I'm writing.

I'm writing because you're in your chair, eating your lunch. You have peanut butter all over your face and hands and cup and tray, so much that you just stopped drinking for a minute to lick your cup. Your little eyes are heavy-lidded because you didn't take much of a nap this morning and all this thinking about walking has worn you out. Your jammies are fuzzy at the knees from crawling. You're singing "Mom-me, Mom-me, Mom-me" over and over to your peanut butter cracker and smiling like you're lit with a 100-watt bulb and idly dabbing peanut butter on the arms of the windsor chair. It's been a pretty typical day so far, an ordinary "same old, same old" day, I suppose - oatmeal with jam and playing and wrestling on the couch - and about twenty stories, including five readings of Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! But I am writing this to tell you that I am so incredibly in love with you and your messiness and your noise and your dirty jammies and your deep love for just one book at a time. And I wanted you to know....

A Long, Long Time Ago....

I don't know where time goes. Our days are not particularly exciting, I don't suppose. They slide in and out, naps and diaper changes and breakfasts and lunches and suppers all just drift by, and one day isn't usually that different from another. You, however, are a weensy bit different each day - napping less or more, trying a new food, dabbling with a new word, preferring a different book, shifting toward something else ever so slightly but ever so steadily.

Some recent highlights:

You're standing! A few weeks ago, I went to get you after your nap, and there you were, standing up and grinning from ear to ear! This morning, your pacifier is laying on the windowsill, so at some point in the night, you've apparently been looking out and left it there.

You now know where your nose, ears, and eyes are. You also know where mine are, which means I now often have a small finger pressing on my nose the entire time you're nursing.

You can tell whether or not a book is right side up and will flip it around the right way to thumb through it.

Your favorite thing ever is pulling all the books off the bottom shelves, making a big pile around you, and looking through them.

You also love baths and in the middle of a bath suddenly lean forward and dunk your face in the water.

You have impressive little fits of temper where you kick both legs in a little jackhammer motion that's actually pretty fun. And today when I told you no about something, your face fell and your shoulders slumped in such a funny, pathetic way that I had to hide my smile.

You pay great attention to crumbs and very carefully hand them all back to me or put them on the next spoon passing through. If I try to give you something you've already rejected, you'll often take it back and then very slowly and deliberately put it in my palm, close my hand around it and shake your head gravely.

You will sit still through at least a dozen books, pointing out all the cats and ducks as we read, leaning back and lounging in comfort.

You are such a sweet, happy, contented little person and we just love living with you. Your daddy and I stand outside your window in the hallway at night and just look and look and look at you. I don't think a night has passed in the last fifteen months where one of us hasn't said to the other, "Isn't she just beautiful? Isn't she just the best thing ever?" So, you see, I've not written much lately, but it's just because we've been awfully busy loving you....

Happy Birthday, Baby

I can't believe you've been here one whole year already. (Well, almost - today is your due date actually and I spent what seemed like a year waiting another four days for you to make your appearance.) Sometimes, it seems as though the year has flown by and like you only just got here, but sometimes it seems as though you've been here forever, because I can only get the vaguest sense of memories of life before you.

I'm a little sad. I love you so much, so much more than I could possibly say, and over the last few weeks, you've started taking steps toward becoming a real person, your own person. You're no longer content to be just where you've been put, to play with what you've been handed, to eat what's been given to you. You're moving around like mad - you can roll and wriggle and flail your way just about anywhere now, you're feeding yourself more and more without my help, you're starting to develop opinions (that you share, sometimes loudly) about what you want to do and where you want to be.

People think that the journey begins when a baby arrives, and it does, in some ways. The adventure certainly begins, but I've come to realize that we've been sort of drifting this past year, you and I, in a sheltered, peaceful harbor. Most of the time, it's just been the two of us, preparing the ship for a voyage. We've been learning the ropes, figuring out how things work, how to steer, how to weather storms, doing little practice drills for the bigger things that lie ahead. Will I meet opposition with anger, frustration, patience, wisdom, a combination? Can I take control of my mood or yours and shift from one to another?

We've just been tacking back and forth, lazily seeing the sights and getting the hang of working together as a crew, but before long, we'll actually set out on voyages, do more than sail up to the edge of the harbor and peep out. We'll make longer and longer trips, but I know that this is the first step toward the day when you'll leave the harbor on your own, when you'll be able to set off on your own voyage, and while I'm so excited to see where you go, it makes me cry a little to think about leaving this little world we have together. Bon voyage, sweet baby....

Right This Minute

I don't know how it's been so long since I've written, but that seems to happen lots - I make a plan to do something and then lie down in bed at night only to realize it never got done. I do this several days, apparently several weeks in a row. Time does, in fact, get away from me. So, instead of tomorrow or yesterday, I'm thinking of right this minute.

You are making the most of all your time. Right now, you are sitting up in your playpen taking note of what happens when you bang various things with your pacifier. You just capsized. Capsizing is probably inaccurate, as it implies a gradual act, while you went over all at once. More "falling off a log" than "capsizing," I think. Now you're attempting to roll over but you keep getting distracted by what you can pick up with your toes and by the tag on the underside of the changing station. Perhaps it is best to express your frustrations to your scarf and wave your left foot emphatically in the air. Or grab Puff Dogg's tail and wave him triumphantly over your head. Or root around like you're sleepy, which you probably are. Or somehow in the last three seconds have managed to rotate yourself 90 degrees. Time to pick up another object and hold it up between your feet for further examination. And now it's time to get you up and let you nurse and put you down for your nap - whenever you start drawing your scarf over your face in shades of, "I want to be alone," it's time for bed. But wait, now it's time to body-slam Winnie-the-Pooh. Grab him by the ears and smash his fat face! And then laugh. You are a strange and funny little person....

Conveyor Belt

So this morning I cried over diaper covers. Seriously, I did. We're canceling the diaper service (going to do the laundry ourselves and just save a few bucks) and today I had to get everything ready for the last pickup. We gathered stacks of clean diapers from all over the house and piled up the four diaper covers we've rented from the service - melon pink, candy pink, pale green (celery), and pale yellow (butter). And when your father stuffed them into a garbage bag with the extra clean diapers, all I could think about was how small they were and how I'd put them on you hundreds of times and how I'd patted your little pink/green/yellow bottom a million times. I cried and cried, even after you went upstairs to take your nap and he left for work. When they came to pick them up, I even had a fleeting urge to run outside, snatch one back and tell them to bill me for it.

I don't know why. You're getting bigger. That's what people, what living things, do - progress and grow and develop. And I'm excited about that, about all the yous that stretch out into the future: the chubby-cheeked little monkey that climbs into our bed in the mornings, the little girl with pigtails who asks questions every thirty seconds, the awkward middle-schooler taking the first steps toward becoming her own person, the teenager who charms and sulks and surprises, the young woman taking what we've taught her and what she's discovered to create someone new.

But with each step toward those people, we leave other versions of you behind forever and I'm sad to see them go. I love the you that you are now so very much that it's hard not to be sad to see that you slipping into the rear-view mirror. Sometimes I wish I could keep you small forever, sometimes I wish I could keep 60 different versions of you (but I suppose your room would get crowded!), and sometimes I get a little bit impatient for another version to arrive. (Not usually because I'm tired of dealing with whatever the current stage entails, but more because I'm excited for what the next stage brings....)

It's like standing in some sort of cosmic bucket brigade with random objects being handed to you on the right and you have to keep passing objects to the left and letting go. Sometimes what you're looking at is something you're not particularly crazy about or something painful to hold, like a rock or a plastic bottle cap or a thistle, and passing it on is easy, or it just goes by without much notice. But so often, it's something beautiful or sweet or precious, like a flower or a childhood memory or a photograph of someone you love so much. And you want to hold it just a minute longer, just stare at it a second more and memorize every detail, or slip it in your pocket, just because you can't bear to pass it on, to know you'll never see it again, or just because what you have is so wonderful, so tangible, that you find it hard to give it up in anticipation of what might be next. Who wants to trade an orchid for a hairpin? But, of course, you only have the hairpin for a minute too, and then it's a beautiful journal, a polished glass bead, an empty cigarette box, or a light bulb. All of those things have a purpose, a moment, and maybe that's what makes a moment special, when what the cosmos hands you is just what you need at that very moment. Some people seem to spend their lives out of sync, always wishing that what they had would have arrived five minutes earlier or five minutes later.... The trick is, as they say, wanting what you have, especially when what you have keeps changing.

Some day, when you're bigger, I'll teach you to hunt for shark teeth. I can wander a beach for hours, entering into a Zen-like trance when all that matters is what is right at my feet, what's right in front of me. And I'm always surprised when I finally look up to realize that I'm miles from where I started, because to me, when I'm hunting, I'm always looking for the next big one, thinking whenever I consider turning back, "But what if there's a Megalodon carcharodon tooth just ahead, just one shell pile further? What if the Big One is just ahead?" Maybe there are two kinds of people in life - those who say, "Let's call it a day" and head for home and those who keep wandering, looking up every so often to be amazed at how far they've come.

The Rest

I do think about things besides you. That's probably a surprise to you (and anyone else who might be reading this), but it's true. It's impossible to focus so relentlessly on just one thing, and I do have other thoughts that shift in and out of my mind. The problem is that, to me, everything other than you is hopelessly banal for the most part, and to other people, everything you is hopelessly banal for the most part. Therein, as Dharma says, squats the toad. So I spend a lot of time keeping my own counsel.

And reading. I thumb my nose at everyone who told me that I wouldn't read again after you were born. I read less, certainly, mostly just because I'm bone-tired when I hit bed at night and can barely keep my eyes open. (And because indulging in bouts of insomnia that allow me to read until 4 a.m. are dangerous.) I've read 20+ books since you were born, and I'm not quite back to my average of 4-5 books a month, but I'm getting there. Since September, I've read, among other things:

Packing for Mars
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Silent on the Moor
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
The Lace Reader
Motherless Mothers
Room
Freckles and The Girl of the Limberlost (favorites of your grandma's)
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe
Matterhorn
Fingersmith

And, of course, I work. In the months since you've arrived, your father (and I) curated an exhibition at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio and wrote an exhibition catalogue on Ohio decorative arts. And organized a Midwestern decorative arts conference. And lectured several places, including the Hudson, Ohio public library and the Oglebay Antiques Show. I've written newsletter articles about everything from Waterford crystal to William Henry Harrison, Christmas ornaments to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

I've taken care of Elvis, our very sick cat; lost 40 pounds; started making homemade vegetable stock; planted nine tomato plants, three peonies, and some rhubarb; knitted socks and dishcloths; shopped for Christmas and birthdays; signed us up for a CSA membership and discovered the joys of garlic scapes; and helped your father assemble an Oldenburg wardrobe. This is how you're going to be a year old soon and I find myself wondering where the time went....