Growing

 You are so tall! You are 98th percentile for height, which is amazing. Your smile is infectious, and there is no sound I love more in the world than your happy giggle. You have started to be impatient to get to school, which is nice to see. We go to a playground around the corner and you want to go down the big slide and play in the baby car and on the abandoned tricycles. When we go down the slide you sit on my lap and I count one.... two.... (on two I vibrate my legs like we are revving up our engine) and on THREE! we slide down, and you giggle, and I kiss your sweet baby cheeks.

I love your sweet baby cheeks. 

I usually say "may I smooch you?" before I do it, trying to respect your autonomy. I don't know why I use "kiss" as a noun and "smooch" as a verb, but that's how it shakes out. We give kisses, but we also smooch. 

You are learning words, but can't quite say them yet. You can point to my bellybutton when I ask you where it is, you point at Milo, you point at your toy apple, you point at the shower door. I'm so curious what-all is happening in your baby mind at any given time. 

You have been waking up unusually early - like 4:30, 5 am. And having your morning nap early too. I'm not sure what the deal is, as you seem tired and like you don't want to be awake. I have ordered you some special overnight diapers, on the theory that maybe you are wet and that is bothering you. We shall see. Dare I hope that an overnight diaper will carry you straight from 7 pm to 7 am, and it turns out we aren't taking a morning nap at all? 

You love books, and my old mushroom bell toy, and your grandparents are going to send up my tricycle for you, which I think you will like. My baby is a toddler now. I knew, intellectually, that babyhood didn't last all that long, but it's a different thing entirely to experience how brief it is in real time. 

I love you so much that sometimes I think I can't handle it.

And that is how things stand on this, a couple of weeks after your first birthday.

Birthday!

 This morning, after first nap, as I pulled off your sleeping romper and started to climb out of my own pajamas, I asked the smart speaker to play Sweet Child of Mine for us while we washed. When the guitar riff started and I began to bang my head gently, you grinned and started nodding along. 

Then we drove to school listening to music that makes me think of you, and it was a sunny and crisp autumn day in New England, and when we got to school you were so excited that you insisted on walking up all the steps yourself and then pressed your hands on the glass to be let in and didn't even need a goodbye hug. I will pick you up in three hours and then we will go home, and this afternoon in our garden you will have your first carrot cake cupcake. And your Manamana has gotten you a balloon.

I love you so, sweet Succotash of mine. 

I cannot believe you are really here.

One Year Ago

 Today I was in the hospital, entering my 24th hour of induced labor to have a baby. Today I am draped over a smooshy beanbag chair in a funny little 1920s era office that I have rented together with some friends to have a space to write while my Succotash is in Montessori up the street. After a bumpy beginning my baby now happily walks himself up the steps to the infant and toddler house, and knocks on the glass door to be let in. Today he almost jogged into the classroom to see his babyfriends, not even stopping for an extra hug, and barely registering when I said "bye bye Succotash, I love you. Quack quack quack I'll be right back."

My baby isn't a baby anymore. In the night he rolls over onto his belly and sighs. I am beginning to think he might wean himself of his own accord, after several weeks being worried he would remain a gung ho partisan of nursing until well into first grade. He doesn't reach for me as much in the night as he did before. He rolls enough that we have obtained a toddler mattress and padding for the floor, because I'm worried soon the bed won't be safe for him. Strange days.

Tomorrow we will celebrate with a grandmother and an uncle and a neighbor or two in the garden, with a cupcake each and a balloon for the birthday boy. He won't know why so many people he loves are all in the garden, or what to do with the candle. Here is the robust little fellow, tall, inquisitive, with an unfortunate habit of poking baby friends in the eye when interested in them. He is unlike the seven pound creature who emerged from my body in one very surreal moment early in the morning almost one year ago. And yet, in that creature I can see the outline of the boy who lives with me now.

I feel sort of inadequate to the task of expressing what it means to me, and to my husband, to have him here, for him to be turning one year old tomorrow, for him to be real, and really here, and alive, and with us, and a person who is at the very beginning of what (God willing) will be a long and eventful and meaningful life. I look around at Mustard House now and dare to imagine that he might be in this house with his grandchildren one day, that it will have been in our family for over a hundred years, that my first book will have secured a home for this imaginary family I never dared to dream I would have until, one moment, almost one year ago, it appeared.