A Busy Weekend

The last few days have brought many adventures. We drove, with Ricki and Peter and Agnes, to Heather's wedding in Spicer, Minnesota. You wriggled in your sundress through most of the service. We observed the exchanging of the vows from the entryway of the church where you crawled around furiously and sucked on a pink plastic spoon. On the way to the wedding we drove through miles and miles of farmland. Over one green field were a pair of thin white clouds, one slightly below the other, that contained a rainbow inside of them. Red, orange and yellow in one cloud and green, blue, indigo, and purple in the other. We craned our necks and "wowed" a lot while you attempted to break the skin of a bagel with your two bottom teeth.

Your appetite is currently either enormous or nonexistent. When you're not hungry you turn your head away or spit the food out or wrinkle up your nose. When you are hungry you open your mouth and lean forward in your chair and make the grunting sounds of a tennis pro deep in your throat. Yesterday morning, Daddy could barely convince you to eat three bites of oatmeal. In the afternoon, Grandma Ricki fed you half a sweet potato mixed with tofu, yogurt mixed with an entire peach, and half a banana for dessert. You are growing more and more fond of solid food and more and more fond of eating when we eat. Daddy calls you his little Mimetic.

On Saturday, Grandpa Mark and Grandma Dorothy came for a visit! It was rainy outside but we had a lovely quiet day inside. You showed off your crawling skills and your one-handed standing ability, you fondled Grandpa's mustache and went bat-shit looking at a photo of yourself on Grandma's camera. While you slept we talked about John and Anna's wedding and Martha's new boyfriend and Peder's job prospects; we drank wine and good gin Grandpa brought from England; we ate steak salad and warm rolls and cherries.

And you slept on---all the way until 6am. You did this again on Sunday night and again last night. That's right, Thiz, you are finally sleeping through the night! Hurrah! This achievement didn't come without a little pain--I spent a few nights last week on the couch in the basement, curled in a sleeping bag that smelled of boy-sweat and campfire while you cried upstairs and Daddy slept on.

There is much more, of course, there always is. How you can now stand for 2 or 3 seconds on your own, how you crawled all the way to the front door when I left the house yesterday and watched me drive away with big solemn eyes, how close you are to using language to name things, how when we walk around the lake you always sit forward in your stroller, gripping the little tray in front of you. The other babies we pass are always reclined, relaxed, asleep or eating Cheerios casually or sucking on a pacifier. You lean forward, alert, determined not to miss anything, every fiber intent on soaking in the world. You still don't yet know to prioritize objects--the baby gosling is as important as the sailboat is as important as the tree's shadow is as important as the metal clasp on the side of your stroller. I wonder how much I have learned not to notice. It occurs to me that instead of squatting by the side of your stroller and repeating "goose" over and over again until you pay attention to the thing that I think matters in the landscape that I should be following your eyes, your line of sight, so that I might remember all of the nuances of the world that I've learned to forget.