House Tour and other thoughts

You have become very verbal, and you get excited when friends come over to the house. While home for Thanksgiving my friend Julie came over and as you led her up the stairs to the playroom you pointed at the antique mirror on the wall that said "That's art. No touching." This of course was before you got so worked up over wanting her and my attention while she vented to me about something to do with her son that you pelted her in the head with a Lego and you and I had to go sit in the other room to calm our bodies and talk about what behavior is allowed and what isn't. Ah, Succotash. You are two! Sometimes so very two. But the wet kisses make up for it. 

I enjoy your house tours so much. A new possible babysitter came over to play and you were showing her all your toys. I still have to translate. "This is the Ama, and this is the baby, and this is Big Bird. There's a boat and an alligator and then there's the bus." (Your summary of Little People toys plus the plot of The Muppet Movie, which you call "puppets" and which you insist on watching almost every morning. Your favorite scene is the one with Steve Martin as the waiter. You've started saying "Steve Martin!" when you want to see it. And if I want to make you laugh at the dinner table, all I have to do is lean in conspiratorially and say "Sparkling muscatel. One of the finest wines of Idaho," and you crack up.)

While in general I prefer to keep your baby blog heavy on the charming things you do and how much I love you, but there is context in the world, unfortunately. I am still afraid of the pandemic, even as we have slowly learned to live within it. I hate seeing your smile disappear behind a mask. And as new words bubble up in your mouth every day, one time zone away words disappear from my mother's mouth at almost the same rate. This Thanksgiving morning, while we were happily ensconced in Marblehead ("Mahulhead!" you said for the first time, and also "I uv oo" which made me die), watching puppets for the ninetieth time and anticipating a low key dinner with Ginger and Brian and their friends Colleen and Christ and the good silverware because that's who I am even if I don't have time to polish it, my mother got up at six in the morning and went wandering outside in her pajamas in a light rain. Wandering is not unusual for Alzheimers patients, but it is hugely dangerous, and I am now triangulating safety measures for their apartment in hopes that Mom doesn't have to move to memory care for a few months longer.

I haven't entirely finished mourning the relationship I wish you could have had with my mother, Succotash. She was brilliant. Brilliant, and dry, and funny, and sharp, and her knowledge of decorative arts was encyclopedic, and she also drove me crazy and was rigid, maybe even more rigid than I am, and could telegraph her discomfort though a formality of tone that made me insane, and that I certainly do as well, which will probably make you insane. Selfishly, I also watch what is happening to her and worry about where you will be in your life when it happens to me. She's only 31 years older than me, which is long, but not that long. I can remember 31 years ago. 31 years ago I was 13 years old. Seventh grade. I remember seventh grade. And most of what has come between. In contrast I am 42 years older than you. Which means you will likely be much younger than I am now when you have to install baby locks on the doorknobs of wherever I am living, and persuade me to wear an ugly GPS watch so that you can track me on your cell phone, or whatever technology has supplanted cell phones in 30 years. 

I hate the thought of leaving you in only 30-odd years. For though Mom hasn't left yet, she is going. A word a day slips away, and I feel like I am watching her unraveling at the same time that I am watching and reveling in your coming together. I guess that's how it's supposed to go, on a macrocosmic level. Mom's time is almost past. My time is now. Your time is coming, is almost here. That's how it's supposed to be. But all the same, I wish you could have known her. I wish she could have known you. I wish, still, that there could have been more time.

25 Months!

A rough few nights for you, as you battle another cold, poor baby, and also I think get to work on your 24 month molars. But you've gotten much more conversational, and have been talking in your sleep. Last night at one point you clearly said "soccer ball" before rolling over and resuming snoring.

You are just at the moment of going from referring to yourself in third person to using "I." Sometimes you switch. "I see!" meaning "I want to see." "I see Mama! I see house!" = I want to see Mama, I want to go home. But when someone takes something that is yours, you get very upset and say "Succotash! Succotash soccer ball!"  

You are working out who owns what. What's Mama's and what's yours and what's Daddy's. You also rather charmingly have started saying "thank you!" when someone gives you something, be it dinner or a toy. Maybe I wrote about this already, but a week or so ago we were at the playground in Marblehead and you got very upset when I let a neighbor toddler use your travel potty. Later we debriefed about it and I apologized to you, saying that I didn't realize it would upset you to have someone else use your potty, that it was your potty and I wouldn't do that again. You considered what I said and then said "thank you." 

You have three giraffes, called Faffs, and one is the Mama and one is the Dada and one is the baby. You also charmingly use the "It's a" construction. "It's a baby faff." "It's a mama." "It's a Succotash." "It's a Succotash's." "It's a finished."

You like to choose your clothes now. This shirt, or this one? These socks, or these ones? We pick your jammies every night, but you aren't always that particular about your play clothes. But your favorite undies have cars on them. You know where the hamper is, and to put your clothes there when we get ready for warm water every night. You still need assistance getting undressed. If I get one of your arms out you can finish taking off a shirt, and while I suspect you could take your pants and undies off yourself, and I know you can take socks off, I think you prefer that I do it. "Mama do it. Go, Dada!"

You know the way home, and the way to the playground from school. You know where the red panda is in the Central Park Zoo, and where the penguin house is. You know that often guys play trombone or saxophone under the bridge with the musical clock on the way to the children's zoo. "It's a guys! It's a music!"

The world is largely divided into Mamas, guys, and Succotashes. Last night we spotted people puffing their way to the finish line of the NYC marathon in Central Park, and you pointed and said "Mamas!" There were lots of mamas finishing around then. Tougher mamas than your own. You have been in a mama place lately, which is tough on your dad, though he understands. You are of the opinion that Mamas nurse, and Dadas cook. And Succotashes eat! They also nurse. You are still a fan of nursing, though I've noticed you have started to forget about it when you are absorbed in something else. We went to play in the expansive firehouse playroom of a celebrity colleague of your mother's, and you had such a good time pushing his son around in a little sledge and trying on antique fire hats that you didn't ask to nurse once. 

You like to pretend to cook in the playhouse at St. Vartan's - pizza and pasta are your specialities. You are signed up for soccer class with other 2 and 3 year olds, which you adore (so far), and the young soccer guys who teach it are very kind and patient, and give you high fives. You are the youngest and the biggest, and you can actually kick a ball into a net, sometimes. 

This past weekend we busted out the vintage Fisher Price little people playsets, and you are now obsessed, vastly preferring them to the bulky, overscaled, nonchokable modern versions you already have. We brought back the Sesame Street clubhouse that was your dad's, and an airplane and vintage car and camper that were mine, and you spend many long minutes at a time moving people about. "Two Ernies," you point out to me. "Big Bird." We have started showing you vintage Sesame Street, which you like, but then you get bored after a while and want to make a play fort out of couch cushions, which you learned from Theo and Felix. 

You are asserting your autonomy more, and I am trying to notice how annoying it must be to have a bigger person wrestle you into a stroller or wipe your nose when it's not what you want. I do my best to collaborate with you, and most of the time it works. You climb into the stroller yourself, you tell me when you have to potty. You are as stubborn as I am, God help us. But you are your own person. I love you so much, and I love watching who you are becoming.