A New Year

 You are upstairs with your dad negotiating whether or not to turn off The Great Muppet Caper, which continues to be on steady repeat in the mornings while the adults wake up with coffee. I'm sorry I missed all of December, Succotash, but I literally haven't opened my computer in weeks, as I've been spending all my time parenting you, my exuberant, enormous 2 1/4 year old boy. 

We left New York on December 17, just as the Omicron surge was cresting over the city, and here it is January 4 and we are still in Massachusetts, even though your school is back in session today. First Ama and Poppop canceled their Christmas visit. Then Nana and Grandpa arrived, then Will and Irina and Clara. We had a beautiful and raucous Christmas, and you did your level best being okay with Clara playing with your toys, and Grandpa got to watch you bang on the piano and hide his chagrin, and we all watched A Charlie Brown Christmas for the first time, and Clara introduced you to Gene Kelly, and now when you see him tap dancing you are so moved that you say "excuse me Dada" and edge your dad aside so that you can go tap dance along with Gene. You are in a big dancing phase, which I love. You throw your whole, increasingly muscular and coordinated, body into it, hands waving, stamping feet, and you speed up and slow down with the music tempo, which means you're actually listening to it, which amazes me. 

But then Will felt off on Christmas Day and put a mask on and slept in the family room, and on Boxing Day morning they left and he got a PCR test and it was positive. My parents fled that afternoon while you were napping, and we began a period of lockdown and nasal swabs while we waited to find out if we were positive too. The good news is, we aren't. The bad news is, the rest of the world is. In truth even though all signs point to this variant being much milder, and it continues to be less serious in children, and it continues to be more dangerous, statistically speaking, to take you on a car ride, I am still having trouble controlling my anxiety about keeping you safe. Maybe because you were so hard won. Maybe because I have had some statistically highly improbable things happen in my life (you, to begin with). I don't know. We are hiding out for a further week. 

Your new favorite things to do include: hiding (under the covers, often with both dad and me), hiding in the hamper closet, sometimes with me, in which case we pretend we are in a boat, dancing, swinging with your dad and me holding your hands. Funny things that have lately happened: you pointed to the screen porch and said "go out there," and I said "you want to go on the screen porch? What do you want to do there?" and you said "have cocktails!" which cracked me up. Every night when you get undressed one of your big jokes is to pretend to put your clothes in the wrong hamper. You'll sprint with them from the nursery to the bedroom, calling "This hamper?" and I'll say "No, this hamper!" laughing and pointing at your hamper, and you'll say "this hamper?" pointing behind the bedroom door, and I'll say "no, this hamper!" before you dash back in, usually buck naked, and merrily throw your clothes in the hamper in your room.

Our other game is to point to different things in the bathroom and say "Boob?" and you say "no boob!" "Boob?" [pointing at a crane on the wallpaper] "No boob!" "Boob?" "No boob!" Boy you sure like boobs. "I nurse on mama boob," you explain to your dad. He understands.

For Christmas we gave you a "Toot toot," aka a wooden train set, which you adore but which is also a tiny bit more advanced than you are ready for, so it occasionally causes you some intense frustration. You are practicing dealing with it, some days more successfully than others. You have also gotten hilariously - to us anyway - nostalgic. You point to your nursing pillow and explain it's what we used when you were a baby. You rediscovered your wubbanub (a little giraffe with a pacifier attached) and also exclaimed that it was something you had when you were a baby. You love looking at pictures from when you were a baby, and sometimes you will announce that you still are a baby. Which you sort of are, of course. But then you sometimes reject things you determine are for babies. Like milk in a glass. No, babies drink milk. (The fact that babies also nurse, and you are still a huge partisan of nursing and boobs in general, is a point you are conveniently sidestepping.) I am sympathetic to the strange in-between phase in which you find yourself, not quite a baby, but not quite a big kid either. Sometimes I tell you that you are so big, and sometimes I tell you that you are my baby. Sometimes I tell you that no matter how big you get, you will always be my baby.

Other big news - you've stopped wearing diapers at night! The week we got here in fact. And only a couple of wet surprises since. I'm really proud of you. We were discussing it for awhile, and one day I said you know, when we're done with this sleeve of pullups I bet we don't need to order any more, what do you think? And you told me that you wanted to wear undies that night. So you did. Presto.

You still hit sometimes, either for attention or out of anger for frustration. I understand it, of course, but this morning you whacked me on the shoulder while I was sitting at your feet waiting to wipe you after using the toilet, and I said "don't do that, it hurts my body, and it hurts my feelings" (language borrowed from our "hands are not for hitting" book), and you laughed and did it again. Very annoying, Succotash. But after all, you are only 2 1/4.

Lately we went through an intense period of reading Eloise and Eloise in Paris, and cuddling my old Eloise and Skipperdee dolls. Now when I want to be guaranteed that you will fall asleep I've been reading you poems from "When We Were Very Young" and "Now We Are Six," the A. A. Milne books. When I read them to you I sometimes think of Dorothy Parker's review of "The House at Pooh Corner" for The New Yorker: "Tonstant Reader Fwowed Up." But you nestle in and nurse and drift right off to sleep, and I hold you in my arms and kiss the top of your head and we both knead our cold feet together and I think about how dear you are to me, and how much I treasure you, and how I will miss this stage when it is over. Some day you will be a man. Tall, maybe even strapping, tender but brave, dry humored, maybe athletic (that's an observation of your preferences now, I hasten to add, and not some kind of plan I have for you by any means), maybe musical. You may live far away, as I live far away from my parents, and when that day comes, I will miss you. I will miss you so much. 

You are talking more and more. Still with a toddler accent of course, and often I have to be your translator. But it's fun to see. "The dog helps the cows go out to eat fresh grass," you explain to me while we read one of your many farm books. "Charles ripped that and daddy fixed with tape," you point to the elevator page in your Eloise book. You refer to yourself pretty equally as "I" and as "Charles," but lately your affirmative has taken the form of "yes I do!" "Charles, do you want some cheese?" "Yes I do!" "Charles, did you have fun playing with Harrison?" "Yes I do!" And when you want to see something, you say "I see." "I see Harrison," means "I want to see Harrison." "I go play Harrison's house." "I see Sydney."

Sydney is a kid from school who just moved from toddler to primary. She was your snack buddy, and you always sat together. You talk about her all the time, and even sang a punk inflected anthem called "Sydney Sydney Sydney!" at our piano for Ginger and Brian, which they loved. You followed it with a similar punk inflected anthem called "Nursing Please!" which we have all agreed will be the B side of "Sydney." 

We are thinking of selling our apartment, which makes me sad, given how weird and wonderful it is and how much of our family history has unfolded there. But what once felt like security is now feeling sort of burdensome. It's expensive, and we have now had to flee New York City on short notice not once, but twice. And our neighborhood has gotten shadier. And it would be nice to have two real bathrooms, and a real bedroom for you. Your dad points out that if we rent we can spend a couple of years in a big yuppie holding facility that has a playroom, and then we can move to be close to wherever you get accepted to Kindergarten. It really does makes more sense. But I'll be sad to see the place go where I shot myself with progesterone and grew round and then took you home to our elderly dog. 

It's cold in Marblehead today, but crisp and sunny. I've been writing long enough that I should probably rejoin you guys in the family room to see how the heist of the Fabulous Baseball Diamond goes from the Mallory Gallery. I love that Miss Piggy's CB radio handle is "Hamhock." You just love Miss Piggy.

And I just love you.