In Thanksgiving, Of Course

Yowsers. The last ten days or so have been quite the blur, Thiz. For reasons I can mention and for reasons I can't.

You are becoming this miraculous little creature. Your spoken vocabulary is murky but your known vocabulary is huge. You tend to speak a word once, usually randomly, and then refuse to ever speak the word again. Your one-night-stand vocabulary includes words such as kitty, juice, bubbles, ox, outside, shoe, car, truck, book, duck, other, cheese, water, etc. Do you use any of these words of your own volition? No. And why would you, when simply by making the "please" sign (rubbing your chest) and pointing at an object you are able to receive almost everything that you need?

Although singular words are of little interest to you, complete rhetorical arguments are of seeming necessity. You are profoundly interested in educating Xena, Ricki and Peter's dog, and during our visit this weekend, you delivered a variety of lectures. These lectures involve head bobbing, hand gestures, and clear shifts in the tone of your babble: instructional to angry to soothing and back to instructional. Your lecture usually ends with an attempt to pat Xena using both of your hands. So filled with energy is your tiny body that you look like you're banging air cymbals.

A few days ago, Daddy refused your clear request to accompany him on a walk with Luxy. Shortly after he departed I found one of his shoes in the toilet. I didn't put it there.

You received your first haircut this weekend (Grandma had to sit in the chair with you--and your hair still makes you look like a Dickensian street urchin). You also had your first dose of true Thanksgiving food.

Last weekend GM Dorothy and GP Mark drove hours and hours just to see you for a day. It was a lovely visit, filled with soup and books and frosted windows (and glasses).

I must admit, it's been too long since I've written and there's too much to say--too many details and nothing feels quite solid in my head right now.

Let me just say how thankful I am for you. How thankful I am for this particular moment in your life when you are so full of joy and curiosity and wonder. How lovely it is to sit with you for up to ten minutes looking at a single book or to watch you push all sorts of wheeled devices in endless circles. I am also thankful for what will be (I think) our last few nursing moments together. I switched back to full strength birth control and my already meager supply has, I think, completely dissipated. The last few mornings your attempts to nurse have been sweet but exceptionally short lived. It's odd that this part of our relationship--which a year ago seemed to be our ENTIRE relationship--is slipping away with so little fanfare. I will miss being with you in those liminal spaces, Thiz, between sleeping and waking, between darkness and dawn. We used to slide into each other a little bit then--but that time is over now. In part because of the nursing and in part because you are becoming a being entirely distinct from your father or myself. This is perhaps when we marvel at you most, when you do something that reminds us of no one else we know, when you are simply being you, a creature who is new to us and whom we love without bounds.