Six Months Sitting

Number Two sat by himself for the first time today. I use the term "himself" loosely. There was a half minute of preparation during which I batted him back and forth between my two hands in an effort to find balance never before employed. Eventually he stayed where I left him. He bobbed neither right, left or face-first. I laid him back on the ground and ran for the video camera after waiting a few seconds to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

Once back in place with the camera at hand, I worked the weeble for a few seconds until he was again upright (that could be a good euphemism if I wasn't talking about MY SON, you perverts!). Each time I went to bring the camera to my eye, he'd begin to loll. It took a few tries to get all processes in line. I pressed Record.

He sat there looking cute. I began to narrate. "He's sitting! For the first time ever!" Then, as quickly as it had materialized, my pride was squashed by my need to contextualize his accomplishment. "At a few days shy of 7 months old, I guess he's not the most advanced kid on the playground..."

Number Two must have been offended by my deprecating diatribe, because he chose just that second to topple backward. He landed with a head-clunk against the file cabinet. Oops. He began to wail. I pressed Stop. "Shhhh," I sang sheepishly, scooping him up and cuddling him against me. "Shhh." I guess I should've placed him a little further away from the solid objects.

It occurred to me then that certain facets of his advancement, or lack thereof, were in my hands, and this kind of head trauma was unlikely to further the cause. It also did not escape my notice that I'd just given myself another example of my stunted growth as a parent.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the race for my child to be the smartest, the quickest, the best, that I forget where he's coming from. I mean, with a mom like me, he's got to be at a decided disadvantage.

I'm something of a late bloomer myself.

The 30th

Last night, on my 30th birthday, we went to a seaside restaurant in Narragansett. Upon our return to the car after our meal, The Boss peered over a stone wall nearly as tall as she was to an ocean that crashed into rocks below us and stretched out in seeming endlessness before us.

"I can't believe my mind!" she marveled. She meant "eyes," but I liked her spin.

As she focused on the blue beyond, three categories of people squeezed by on the sidewalk: teenagers on the fast track to what lay in front of them; groups of elderly women in no hurry at all; and joggers making a loop. I watched them, then took in my family standing still at my side. The Boss took in sea and sky. Number Two looked at a strange combination of everything and nothing. From a perspective six feet high, The Partner kept a constant scan of all of us (with a few backward glances to the restaurant, where the hostess with the 20 inch waist floated by in front of each new party).

So this is thirty, I thought. The reality coursed through the different levels of my subconscious and my everyday brain, as muddy and salty as the Atlantic.

I can't believe my mind, either.

Happy Birthday, Boss

Today marks the third anniversary of The Boss's rise to power as the head of this family. From the moment she was ripped from my gaping abdomen while I laid there unconscious, she's been the one in charge.



The Boss is benevolent. She drops lispy words of encouragement like candy: "I really love you, Mommy" or "You're beautiful." She says "please" and "thank you" and "may I use that when you're done?"



She only breaks down occasionally, though you definitely don't want to be the one called into her office to witness that harangue.



She's a people person, too. She chats with strangers in the supermarket about subjects ranging from her weekend plans to body parts and functions to her upcoming pre-school matriculation. These strangers are usually charmed by her voice and passion. I am always proud. Okay, well, sometimes--in the case of the exclamations on functional anatomy--I admit to being a tad bit embarrassed.



Her thoughts and emotions are vivid. They're right there. She's a magnifying glass that uses sunlight to ignite everything in the line of sight. Without her, I wouldn't notice half of what's around me, and there'd be no fire.



Yesterday I told her that her birthday was also my anniversary. "You made me a mom," I said. "Before that, I was just Binky."



She laughed, like that was so silly. "You're not Binky. You're Mommy Binky." She threw everything into the giggle that followed, the sound coming from her diaphragm and emerging deeper and louder than one would expect from a just-turned-three-year-old. She always laughs like that. "You're not Binky. Nope."



"That's right," I agreed, matching her laugh. I'd defy anyone not to. "That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you."

Back to the Hospital

Last night three different doctors tried their hand at jabbing my son's back with a needle before successfully extracting the spinal fluid necessary for a full work up after we brought him into the emergency room with a 102 degree fever.

Apparently, any fever in a newborn less than 8 weeks of age requires that needles be stuck willy nilly into limbs and torso while probes are inserted into each orifice. Additionally, there is a mandatory two day hospital stay in anticipation of the results. In our case, Topher is well on his way to sleeping through his first full day at the children's hospital due to the exhaustion wrought by five straight hours of night torture.

So far it looks like a urinary tract infection is the culprit. This kid is almost exactly like his father in every way, but here we are, three weeks in, and my son and I have found something we can commiserate about--a propensity for bladder infections. And to think, I would've been satisfied if we just shared the same blue eyes or even similarly large foreheads.

There may be more tests of the urinary tract once the definitive results come in, but now we wait. The little guy is sleepy and cute and hot in his hospital cage. Next to it is a cot with my name on it.

It's a Boy

Topher's minutes-old fingers were scaly-white and wizened. As I held him for the first time, I marveled at the similarity between those hands and the wrinkled ones of my grandparents, of my great aunts and uncles. I touched the creases. He was my little old man in a hospital room that buzzed with being born.

Two days later, on the morning of our departure, I held my son in my lap while The Partner showered in the bathroom. I had given birth on the very same bed, in the very same room, but now it seemed a different place in the sun and the silence. I saw the brightness of Topher's finger flakes and thought again about how old his new parts shone.

I cried then, not just with a hormonal surge, but with the pressure of an entire lifetime laid out on a tiny pair of hands. I sobbed so loud and long that The Partner heard me from behind the heavy institutional door. He emerged from the bathroom to ask what I was crying about.

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing."

Christopher Cadden, I love you so much, and forever. Because of you, I count ten fingers and ten toes, and while I do it I say a desperate prayer. I try to grasp with my own hands the texture of your future, laid out in deep bisects and powdery whorls.

As I cry I am doing it all at once in wet wishing for your long life.

I am begging for you a collection of years strung together in personalized perfection between the first wrinkles and the last.

Ooh! Ooh! The Boss is Two!

This morning I was consumed by coffee and conversation as I sat with The Partner by the pool, watching The Boss run in circles around the blue shimmers. Suddenly she stopped, tilting an ear toward the treetops. "Owl!" she announced.

That was when The Partner and I chose to listen. Indeed, there was a subtle hoo hoo in the distance. We looked at each other below the soft warble. Suddenly there were tweets, too, and the rustle of vivid green leaves, and the smell of sun on dewed dirt. There was everything that had always been there, hovering unnoticed. "Hoo hoo," said The Boss. Sounds can smile--and they did--as we repeated them after her: "Hoo hoo. Hoo hoo!"

"Funny owl!" The Boss chortled. Then she set off on another wobbling lap around the pool. This time we heard the slap of tiny feet on cement. We thought we heard the breeze blow back whisps of her hair. And we were in the moment; we were in this moment where The Boss is turning two.

Happy birthday, little girl. Happy birthday to the one who fills all our senses with her own.

The Boss Is In

Lately when I look at The Boss, I don't even recognize the little girl staring back at me. She's no longer a novelty in her cute, ill-fitting jeans. Instead, she fills out the denim and runs it ragged. Her face is taking kid-shape. She's sucking up experience and spitting it back out in the form of personality.

The Boss likes to put "back." Blocks are played with and returned to their box. She brings her unfinished cup of milk to the refrigerator when she's done and personally sees to it that the door is shut with a satisfied "closed!" Items she deems unnecessary are relegated to the garbage can. Just now she tried to throw out the newspaper before The Partner got his local fix. She is unlike I ever was: neat and focused. Maybe it's a phase and maybe it's not, but it is wholly unique to my frame of reference.

I suppose it stands to reason that she throws tantrums, too, when life hands her things that aren't easily assigned a proper place behind doors she can shut. Such situations are always exacerbated by the fact that her mind works faster than her tongue, and that my own mind is the furthest behind. She says what she means and means what she says, but I have no idea what she's talking about.

That's okay, though. It's all okay. We'll figure each other out as we go along.

Baby Love

The Boss has taken to belting out "baby" at intervals for which I cannot seem to determine the motivation. She learned the word just last week when her grandparents brought her first baby doll. She held it; she kissed it; she fed it a bottle. She called it "baby."

Since then, the word has taken on a heightened significance. She looks at pictures of herself as a newborn and says "baby." She wakes from nap screeching "baby" as a way to get my attention. She looks in the mirror and sees a baby. When her father puts her in her crib at night, it's to a chorus of "baby, baby, baby."

We first thought she was asking for her doll each time she'd say it. That quickly proved not to be the case. Then I started thinking she was simply babbling to hear herself speak (which, by the way, would be yet another indication that she is almost entirely her father's daughter). But with each passing "baby," the truth became clearer and clearer to me. The Boss is starting to figure herself out.

When she wakes from naps, she's telling me she's ready to be picked up. "This baby is done sleeping" would be the rough translation, I think. It's a basic tactic, but even before I figured out the meaning, it worked.

That baby in the mirror is her. "Guk! Baby!" becomes "Look! It's me! I'm a baby!" to the enlightened mama.

And at bedtime, it's again the girl that hates her crib. "I'm not tired. Why don't you get it? Babies don't like to sleep!"

Watching her slow ride into the realms of thinking, feeling and articulating makes me feel like the only mother in the world--past, present and future. I've heard about the joys of watching children grow, but other people's recollections never meant anything to me. They still mean nothing. The only thing that reverberates against the closed doors of perception is the strange, personal newness of growing my own human being. Her life is something I need to experience for myself to truly understand.

I will learn slowly and, more often than not, the hard way; but even if she's more her father's daughter than she is mine, so will she.