Balloon

My dear darling Thisbe,

Alas, life has taken over more and more and, between the teaching and the grading and the book clubs and the writers' groups and the walks in early spring sunshine, I have not been nearly as diligent about keeping up with the blog. Know that this does not reflect a lack of diligence to you, just a lack of diligence to your recorded self.

You are sitting up now, entirely on your own. This began just days after your six month check-up, but at first you resembled a buoy in the midst of a tumultuous sea, only unlike a buoy, you lacked the ability to right yourself, so each imaginary gust of wind sent you toppling. But over the course of two weeks, your stomach muscles tightened and now you sit on your own, a bucket of toys in front of you, pulling out first a stuffed lion and then a magenta plastic ball and then a wind up caterpillar. When the basket is empty, I replace the toys and you begin again.

And you are a new you, somehow, too. Maybe it is something about the six month mark or maybe it is learning to sit up on your own, but you are, the majority of the time, a bright and glowing thing now. When I come down the stairs, when Daddy returns from walking Luxy, when Grandma Ricki appears to unhook you from your car seat: you smile, and your smiles are easy now, no work, light doves flitting easily from your lips.

Last weekend, Grandma Dorothy and Grandpa Mark came to visit you and oh how they piled on heaps and heaps of love. Grandpa spooned carrots into your extended tongue and Grandma sent you into fits of giggles by kissing your bare toes on the changing table. Grandma Dot's mother, Momo, is dying and Grandpa Mark is exhausted from waking up at 4:30am and ironing out the creases of a university, but still they drove 18 hours in a single weekend just to see you and to cuddle you and to catch your easy smiles.

The day they left you got sick, very sick, for the first time. By "very sick" I mean 103.7 degree fever, I mean choking on your own vomit, I mean unable to sleep no matter in what position I held your warm body. I tried rocking you, I tried nursing you to sleep next to me in bed, I tried bouncing you in the eerie green Vicks night light glow of the nursery, but to no avail. By 3am I was close to taking you to the hospital--and then, suddenly, I thought of your car seat, a perfect upright yet comfortable position for your congested nose. You feel asleep almost immediately that way. I lay awake, wondering why I hadn't thought "car seat" at 10:30pm instead of 3am.

But the final story to tell, this moment of shiny green bliss we had today, is this:
Upon the publication of Grandma Ricki's new novel, her neighbor bought her helium Mylar balloons. Upon encountering said balloons, you were entranced. So Grandma gave you one to call your own, shiny and green and in the shape of a star. We have spent a lot of time in the last week in fast admiration of this balloon. You like to suck on it and gaze at your distorted reflection in its skin. Today, after feeding you, I let you stand on my lap, facing me, so that I could check your snot-faucet of a nose. "Balloon?" I said. And your eyes immediately turned to where the balloon was hovering, specter-like, it's wrinkling back pressed to the ceiling. Daddy raised his eyebrows. You looked at Daddy. "Balloon?" he said. And immediately your eyes turned ceiling-ward again, your throat open and exposed, so that you could look at the balloon.

We squealed with delight! Well, I squealed and Daddy just raised his eyebrows again and said "wow." Then he said "she is starting to connect signifier and signified" which is just the academic way of saying you are learning MEANING, Thisbe! You are taking words in and digesting them, you are storing them in your bones, you are getting LANGUAGE.

For a Mama who's a poet, that's a pretty big deal. I hope I am able to muster equal enthusiasm when you learn how to do differential equations.