The picture above is not from yesterday or today. It is from the day after Christmas when you played duets with Grandma Gail for a long, long time. You are fascinated by music; oftentimes, your father can make you stop fussing just by singing "Wade in the Water" or "Nap Time for Thisbe." I imagine the ivory also felt good, cool and smooth below your fingers.
Today, the cold continues, but you are cheerier and this helps.
Yesterday, Ricki and I walked you around the track at Tostrud. You hung in the Bjorn, stiffening and leaning forward as the runners passed us, as though you wanted to join in the race.
For dinner: spare ribs and green bean casserole and small yellow potatoes, boiled and buttered and salted.
Then I clipped the skin of your left thumb. You screamed of course, one of your first real pains, while I blotted the wound with a washrag. Smudge of blood. Smudge of blood. Smudge of blood.
You drank 7 ounces of milk from a big bottle with a purple ring on top. Then you slept for 12 hours straight.
Only I woke, with the nightmare I always have, that you are lost in the comforter around me, that I have forgotten to tuck you back into your crib, that I have smothered you instead.
Your cheeks are redder, rounder, they hang a little off the sides of your face. The swell of your belly slims to a tiny waist, often marked with red splotches from the tight of your diaper.
On a white scrap of paper on the coffee table, a list of questions to ask Dr. Ripley today: What are the tiny yellow discolorations on the inside tips of Thisbe's eyebrows? Should we still be swaddling her? Would it be OK to take her into a chlorinated pool?
Secretly, the answer I hope for: Your daughter is the most perfect child I have ever seen. You are excellent parents.
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