Fifteen Months
This past month has been a whirlwind, not only because of the dramatic changes we have perhaps foolishly introduced into our lives, but also because you have suddenly turned into a little boy. In the past few weeks you have begun to talk like a real bona fide person. Your favorite phrase is "What's that?," repeated endlessly, accompanied by the pointing of a straight little finger and an insatiable curiosity. Your exploding vocabulary includes words like car, cheerios, hat, "up, up," and "night, night." My favorite has to be your new found passion for hide and seek and the resulting exclamation of "there he is!" when you've been found.
Deciding to place you into someone else's care was a difficult situation and I was surprised to realize that in the end, you made the choice. We went to lots of places, some dirty and horrible, some bare and noisy, and you clung to the close vicinity of my kneecaps and would venture no farther, silent and withdrawn. When we finally found a comfortable home with nice people and agreeable children, you wandered away from my lap within the first several minutes, smiling and babbling. You were even, in fact, reluctant to leave. The first day when I picked you up to go home you wouldn't look at me for the first several minutes, as if you were uncertain it was acceptable to forgive me for my gross negligence in leaving you in someone else's home, no matter how wonderful, the ENTIRE day. But then you approached me with your shoe, placed it in my lap, leaned over so you could peer into my face as I sat cross legged on the floor, and smiled broadly. "Hi!" you said and squirmed into the scoop of my lap as if you had never left.
We also took you camping for the first time this month. You were a much better traveler when you were a baby, quiet and easily preoccupied. Now you fuss and long for the space to stretch and can not be distracted from your discomfort by the familiarity of toys. When we finally reached the campsite and deposited you in the red dust, you seemed unable to believe your good fortune. An entire evening to walk around gathering as much dirt as possible into the crevices of your pants and chin folds? Bitchin. But by the end of the weekend you were wandering around the site as if it were a wasteland, cold, dirty and missing the freedom of a house full of toys tailored exclusively to your gooeyness.
I think I will always remember this month though as the time when you were monumentally sick. Battling double ear infections, a croupy cough, and fluid in your lungs, your fever raged on and on. Your father and I did a juggling act to stay home with you, struggling to help you recuperate. After several days we ended up in the ER one night, frightened by your shallow breathing and continued fever. Through it all, while you may have fussed and endured resentfully, we could always manage to glean a smile or a giggle. In the waiting room at 10:30 pm after they stuck you with a steroid shot, you and your father had a fabulous belly laugh repeating the word "Fluff" over and over (your version sounds more like "fvuff"). And just today, worried about your continued fever and congestion, I took you to bed with me and we vegetated, watching TV for nearly two hours. I attempted to sit you up to allow you to play with some toys from under the covers but you protested until I laid you back down against my chest, where you fell asleep, snoring through the snot, your forehead warm and cheeks flushed. I felt so amazingly grateful that out of all the people in the world, I was the one that had the power to comfort you, even if it meant that I had to be a human tissue. As we're quickly learning, parenting is all about trade-offs. This is one I was happy to make.
Posted by Kaz at April 22, 2007 3:34 PM