22 Months



You are getting bigger and bigger and the thought of it - the observance and recognition of it - freezes me sometimes. It renders me still, mouth closed, listening. It seems impossible, you this big. And then the thought, just the thought makes me roll my eyes with its predictability, with its sentiment. But still. You were once, so tiny, so tiny and lavender and rubbery and screaming. 

And now: you sit in my chair to eat lunch, and you ask me for a fork.

Last week, you began to push away from me at night time, and point down the hall. "Bed," you told me.

Yesterday, you were hard at work at your play kitchen, putting toy carrots into a toy pot and then in your toy oven. Then you pretend-washed your hands in the sink, saying "soap" repeatedly as you pretend-lathered. When you turned on the faucet, you said, "psssshhhhhh." Andy asked you if your carrots were ready. You opened the oven, checked, looked back up at him and said, "Almost."

I have had a stomach ache for a week. Not like I ate something bad. Not indigestion. Its high up there, right under my ribs, where it ached persistently the last few weeks of my pregnancy. "You've got a small torso," my Dr. told me then, shaking his head sympathetically. But its not that, either. Its the pain of the temporary. The pain that comes with the sudden realization that, no matter what it seems, this will not last. This too, will soon be over. 

You sit across from me, stabbing bits of mango with your fork. You look at me out of the corner of your eye and you laugh and laugh and laugh. Sometimes, in the middle of playing, you look up at me, and start making noises, shaking your head, gesturing into the air. Then you fall apart laughing, slapping your leg, bending at the waist. You look at me, waiting out my reaction, seeing how I fancied your story. Arlo, I love them already.

Comments