Napping

 I am typing very quietly seated on the floor next to your mattress while you are napping. Your baby toes just twitched.

Your first real word is "moon." You point out the window at it, and you have taken to hunting for it in all of your board books. You also know "hat" and point to your head when you see pictures of hats, and you know "dog" and "bird" and "cloud" and "balloon." You say "out" to get out of the shower, and sometimes "in" to go through a door, and "up" to be picked up. I feel like the dam has started to break. 

You amaze me.

Milestones

 A small Christmas, with just us three and the dog and your uncle and his girlfriend, with grandparents over Zoom, but as befits a Christmas for a little boy who has just turned one, the number of presents for you was dizzying. Jammies you have already outgrown! Stacking things we will give away! A cement mixer truck that you love, an umbrella that you love even more, a stuffed sloth from your uncle which you adore, and best of all - extendable back scratchers that your dad put in the stockings, which you collected and wielded with great alacrity and some alarm on the part of the dog. You were so exhausted from all the excitement that you fell asleep at your nap without even rocking. Then we had a quiet afternoon playing with fake tattoo pens and, eventually, showing you fifteen minutes or so of your very first film - The Thin Man. It's technically a Christmas movie, after all, with plenty of snappy dialogue, and a dog for you to stare at. You are enjoying identifying dogs in your baby books, and your new favorite activity is to hunt through and find all instances of the moon in your books. You have figured out that they represent the moon in the sky, and you find one, sometimes say "Mmmm," and then point out the window.

"Look, that woman is wearing a hat," I said to you about glamorous Maureen Stapleton. You pointed to your head, and I said, "yes! That's right!"

You also have finally started signing! You made the signs for "more" and "milk" for the first time - with me, anyway - on Christmas eve. Last night while we were snuggling and watching Nick Charles mix martinis you nursed, then looked up at me and made the sign for "more." You have also made the sign for "sleep" when it's time for your nap. I feel like Annie Sullivan having a breakthrough with Helen Keller.

You have said "out," or something like it, and you have started waving goodbye when you want whatever is happening to end. When you want to go to bed you wave goodbye to your father with increasing insistence.

Today it is breezy and cold and sunny and after your nap we are going to go outside and play somewhere with your godlessparents Ginger and Brian. 

All in all, it was something like a magical Christmas, even given everything. I think it's because of you.

14 Months

 "Charles," I said to you this morning in the kitchen. "Would you please put your lunchbox in your school bag?"

You accepted your lunchbox, and then toddled over to your school bag and put it in.

Google has been showing me photos from a year ago, and they are of a chubby baby napping in his baby pillow with a stuffed giraffe leaning benevolently over. You have the first of your six chins. And now, a year later, you can walk and know what "lunchbox" and "put" and "school bag" mean, and you get pleased with yourself when you succeed. You are a whole little person.

Sometimes I still can't believe you are really here.

True Mother Confessions

 I miss you, when you go to Montessori.

I look at pictures of you on my phone while you are asleep next to me.

I cannot wait for you to talk.

I am amused by the exchange we had yesterday or the day before, when I said "Can you say 'up'?" And you smiled at me and shook your head. (Even though I know you can, because you said it a few months ago.)

Even now, I could be writing, and getting lots done, but instead, I'm on here, thinking about you.