Getting Hi

Today I was holding you in the library, browsing for books on motherhood, trying to keep you from squirming out of my arms and prevent you from disturbing other library patrons at the same time. Just behind where I was browsing a woman was sitting with her 7-year-old son, working on phonics. Quietly. Ca-ca-ca. Bu-bu-bu. You arched your back and I pressed you closer. Ca-Ca-Ca. Bu-bu-bu. Quietly, like the books were murmuring among themselves. And then:

Hi!
I ignored you. Chose a book by a mother with a PhD after her name.
Hi! (again, and louder).
The mother glanced your way. I chose a book with a woman on the back flap who looked like she was pretending to know something sly and secret.
Hi! Hi!
Finally, the woman, stationed on a plastic chair far too small for her large frame, said Hi.
Hi! you said again, emphatically, although this time to close the conversation.
We made our way quickly out of the quiet section of the library.

You have also developed, in the past three days or so, the Cutest Behavior in the World. Just one week ago, you barely tolerated having a book held in front of your face. Books were static and you were the epitome of dynamic. To, fro, back, forth, around, down, under, beside. You were just a bunch of prepositions housed inside a 28 inch frame. But now--if I say "do you want to read a book? can you bring mommy a book?" you go to your book shelf and bring it over to me and hold it out, smiling and shivering with excitement. We read the book and then you go back for another and another. I can see how this behavior, like any other, may grow annoying at some point in the near future, but for today it remains the Cutest Behavior in the World.

Grandma Dot and Grandpa Mark were here for another whirlwind visit this weekend. We walked to the park and watched baseball and ate tuna steaks and mango salsa. Grandma Dot brought you some lovely purple socks (courtesy of her very own knitting needles) and a lovely Farm Animals flap book. You displayed your new-found ability to point to desired objects with marvelous dexterity. In order to quell your interest in the salt and vinegar potato chips and the gin and tonic, I gave you a tiny taste of each. You then pointed excitedly toward each--again and again. If later in life you become a fat alcoholic, you can look back to this moment as the time when it all began.

We are trying to transition you to one nap per day. Yesterday, this worked beautifully--you slept for 2 hours and 15 minutes. In a row. Today you slept for 35 minutes. One nap, 35 minutes. At 6pm you were walking around with the the lid from the caper jar, giggling maniacally, while Daddy and I looked like we'd been run over by a slow moving bulldozer.

This is also perhaps because, after a sudden temperature shift (75 degrees and no humidity!), fall suddenly feels palpable, within grasping distance. And so Daddy and I are already growing more testy, more protective of our work time, more likely to quibble about issues of responsibility and resentment.

Usually I don't resent you, Thisbe, but sometimes I do. I say this so that if someday you feel the same way about your own offspring, you don't feel bad. I love you every second, but some days I long for the buffers of time your father and I used to enjoy. Time usually not well spent, but time that was our own, that we possessed--now I only have two or three hours a day that are truly my own. This is a gift. Some moms get none. And so I feel like those hours should be enough. That I should return, always, to the house and you and Daddy feeling satiated and present and full of self-generated energy. Some days this is true. And then there are the days when I think about turning left instead of right on highway 3, when I think about where I could go and who I would be when I got there--Horrible but Free--and then I turn right, the way I am supposed to. I return to the life I'm supposed to be living, but sometimes I'm not sure who I am by the time I get here.