Plateau

You have slept in until 7:30 or beyond five out of seven days this week. On three afternoons, you took a two-hour nap. Your father and I don't know what to do with ourselves, really. On Thursday we were planning to go to the zoo. Dada came home from work early and we sat on the couch, waiting for you to wake up so we could visit the tapir. No dice. We planned for the same outing yesterday (thinking you could not POSSIBLY take another two-hour nap since you haven't, ever, in the history of your life, taken more than one two-hour nap in the course of a week). We sat on the couch, waiting to take you to see the gibbons. No dice.

You and I continue in what I hope will be the longest snot-marathons of our lives. You seem to be draining in a healthy way and your snot has subsided. Mine is still tinted a sickly green color. According to Mayo Clinic online, caffeine and alcohol do not help to cure sinusitis. In fact, these items are known to worsen ones symptoms. Which may be why you're getting better and I'm not.

We're facing another gray day today. Tis the season for puddles/ice/puddles/ice. When we go for a walk we dress you in wind pants, your pink boots, your too-small pink winter coat, your reindeer hat, and your black REI mittens. You have figured out how to run in the boots and you look hilarious doing so, a little clod of wayward marl, tumbling across the town home parking lot. You've also developed a propensity to scrape snow off the sides of snow banks with your mittens and you love to stomp your way through puddles. We cover blocks and blocks by moving from puddle to puddle, trying to avoid the dog poop that also appears in massive quantities as the snow melts (do people really think it disappears in the snow???).

Looking at photos and blog posts from a year ago, I am amazed at how rapidly you changed from week to week and month to month. Last year, over the course of three months, you went from not being able to sit upright to taking drunk-sailor steps across the living room. Now, the rate of your development seems slower and more opaque. At ECFE last fall, they passed out a chart that mapped child development. At 15 months there was a jaggedy, downhill line to symbolize a lot of "turning inward" and a struggle between dependence and independence. At 18 months, however, the line shoots smoothly upward into the great heavens of childhood genius. I very much admire this line, have been looking forward to its smoothness and incline for some time.

Now that we're there (you turned 18 months on Thursday! hurrah!), I feel a little disappointed. I know you've changed in the last three months, but not in remarkable, "don't they grow up before your very eyes!" kinds of ways. You know a few more words. A few. You're sleeping like a champ. You climb on things. Your manual dexterity is slightly improved. Your pointing vocabulary (i.e. images you can identify in books) has increased. But you haven't learned to whittle or sing American folk songs or put two words together into an itty-bitty sentence. I kind of feel like the line is a lie. That our line is a plateau, the barren horizon, the Midwestern field, all covered in snow.

Then again. Your favorite book right now is "Thisbe's Promise." Aunt Meghan and Uncle Nels bought this book for you after searching Amazon for products with the word "Thisbe" in the title. Surprisingly, it's not a bad book. It's about Thisbe and her Mama gazing out the window and remarking on things like hummingbirds and starfish and butterflies and whales. In the final image, Thisbe and her Mama are swimming with the whales and you like this image best. The catch is that the woman who wrote this book had a daughter named Thisbe who died of a slow, painful, degenerative disease. The reason Thisbe and her Mama are looking out the window is that Thisbe is "sick in bed." And at the end of the book, when Thisbe "feels better" and they "go for a walk" and "swim with the whales" well--well, I know what it means in a way that you don't. So I get tears in my eyes every time we read this book, because our sickness is snot, not malfunctioning nerves, and when the sun gets around to shining we really do get to go outside, and stretch our legs, and walk.

A plateau is a line you can walk upon. We'll take it.