Easter!

 Oh Succotash how much I love you. Easter last year was a nonevent, as you were only just sitting up and we were hunkered down in a house under construction and starting to figure out that the pandemic wasn't going to end any time soon. It was pretty awful, all things considered, and that's why this year was so wonderful.

It was warm and sunny. We dyed eggs outside at the picnic table, with you and your dad wearing giant aprons. Then you were playing ball with Grandpa when you noticed something mysterious hanging on the fence. You pointed it out to us, and it turned out to be a small plush Easter basket with paper grass and a plush bunny and carrot and egg and chick, and a couple of chocolates that you didn't know what to do with and small Fisher Price piglets and bunnies to go with your farm animals. We suggested it had been brought to you by our garden rabbit, who you have been observing lately though the windows. When we told you this, you got very excited and pointed at the shrubs where we usually see her. I love the idea that you think maybe your Easter basket came from our garden rabbit.

Then we went to your new friend Edie's house. She's only a little older than you, but she can say "Chaw-wuls," which is adorable. I have a couple of great pictures of you looking grimly determined as you collect plastic eggs in your basket, and then looking askance at Edie and Ronan as they raid your basket in the playhouse of Edie's fort. 

Then we came home and got Milo to take him for a very slow, desultory walk around the block. The air was soft and salty, reminding me that I need to make arrangements for the sailboat to be launch in a month or two. 

I love the proliferation of small plastic Fisher Price animals taking over our house. They appear in singles and groups, on the kitchen counter, in the study, along the windowsill. I spy a lamb and two piglets outside on the boxwood hedge. 

We are still worried that you're not talking all that much. But over the course of the weekend, you said "light" and "lamp" and "out" and "Milo" and "Nana" and some approximation of your name. Oh! And you climb into your own stroller now, and the other day when you did so you said "Walk!" And you have said "hi," and "hi Mama." You also tipped over your standing tower and bled all over everything, and also had your first stomach virus with amounts of vomiting that were nothing short of cinematic, and which we found terrifying.

All in all, a busy end to your time as a seventeen month old person. In three short days, you are one and a half.