You are 19 months old today and can I just start out by saying: OH MY GOSH, THE CUTENESS! You keep getting cuter all the time! Tell me, how’s that even possible? You are supposed to be adorably cute when you are very young, that’s expected; but as you grow older, you are supposed to gradually lose that cuteness. This seems to be working backwards for you, for you keep getting more and more adorable as you grow. (Even with the screaming.)
This here is currently Cuteness # 1: The Where is It Gesture. Which is also accompanied by an adorable Where is It Sound. (That I cannot insert here.)
You love flowers. Or I should say, the pink flower (whose name I don’t know; although I knew it four years ago, when I planted it) that grows in our front flowerbed. A couple of months ago, at the height of spring, I introduced you to this flower (whose name I still don’t know and don’t feel like looking up right now, so let’s just call it The Pink Flower). So I introduced you to this flower and showed you that “Look, you can smell it!” At which point, you were instantly hooked. Your love for this flower grew and grew, and now every time we leave the house or arrive home, you scrunch up your little nose and make exaggerated sniffing sounds while pointing to The Pink Flower. EVERY TIME. You must go over there and pick one. This has become an integral part of leaving the house and arriving home.
When you pick The Pink Flower, you don’t just smell it and let it go. No, you hold onto it for hours at a time. If we’re going to the store, you hold onto your precious pink flower throughout our entire shopping trip, pressing it to your nose to smell its scent every now and then, and asking for assistance if you’ve accidentally dropped it into the shopping cart. At home, you keep it with you in the house for hours, placing it here and there while you go do something and then going back to it again. These days, I find dried up pink flowers in every nook and cranny, where you’ve placed them for safekeeping. Unfortunately, these flowers don’t bloom through the summer (though I think constantly picking them off has extended their blooming season a bit, cause they’ve never bloomed this long before). I noticed the other day that there are only a few more left. You’re in for some sad disappointment when you’ll soon find that there are no more Pink Flowers. (I’m sure that you’ll give us your Where is It Gesture. Whereupon your father and I will shrug our shoulders and look forlornly at each other.)
Another fascinating toy lately is the telephone. You love that thing. Anytime someone calls our house, you expect to be able to talk to them. Those occasions when we’ve hung up the phone (or tried to) without handing it to you first, you loudly let us know your displeasure. When we hand you the cordless phone, you grab it, hold it to your ear and start walking off. You pace! You pace exactly like you’ve seen your daddy and I do on countless occasions while talking on the phone. It’s hilarious to see my one-year-old pacing and "talking" on the phone, much like a teenager.
You love to play pretend with the telephone. It doesn’t even need to be a real phone; it can be a play phone, a remote control, a Lego or a block. You hold these to your ear as you walk around and talk as if there is someone on the other end. You chatter away and every so often you stop and make an eruptive sound resembling a cough/cry. You fake laugh! It took me a while to realize that you are pretending to talk on the Lego phone, complete with a pretend laughter. The first few times I heard the fake laughter coming from the other room, I was wondering what was the matter? Your execution of this pretend laughter must have improved over time, because now it’s clear to me who you are imitating. It is unbelievable how precisely you are able to imitate your Daddy’s laughter.
You are spending more and more time in make believe. In your world, cherries are cars, a zucchini is an airplane and bugs get unceremoniously flushed down the toilet amidst matter-of-fact waves of bye-bye! Wait! That last one isn’t pretend at all! That’s just something we do when we catch a BUG!
In order to catch a BUG, one needs a very sharp-eyed one-year-old, who will make sure to find every single bug that has ever dared to cross the threshold of the family abode. The BUG may be naively scurrying from one place to another, trying to be inconspicuous as he goes about his day, not knowing that his hours are numbered, because there is a one-year-old by the name of Caleb in the house.
Son, I am very proud of you.
As you have gathered by now, BUGS are not your Mama’s favorite creatures. Whereas last month you’d pick the bug up and squash it into a pulp between your fingers (forcing me to clean BUG GUT off of you – NOT COOL), this month you understand that “Yes, the BUG is there, but I need not pick it up and squash it with my bare hands. We’re not barbarians here. Simply pointing the BUG out will do.”
Thus, you have again applied your talents and have made yourself useful by pointing out every sort of creepy-crawly creature you come across. Which is where I (must) take over by grabbing some toilet paper, gathering up the BUG, and hauling his a** to the toilet. It is a smoothly oiled operation, not hindered by emotion. Afterwards comes the unceremonious flushing, as we send the BUG off to another world with many waves and exclamations of “BYE-BYE, BUG!” (Yes, you now speak in phrases. Unceremoniously.) This is the fate of all BUGS in our house, except for that huge cricket that I couldn’t catch, but was finally able to successfully trap under the plunger and even today, he still awaits his fate there. (What do you think, should we wait one more week before we check on him?)
This is just a heads up, but I may need you to take over this bug-catching chore at some point in the future, if you don’t mind. The only reason I’m doing it now is because I’d rather catch a bug with toilet paper than clean bug gut off your fingers. But if you could learn to catch them yourself with toilet paper... We’ll talk later.
It seems like you’ve suddenly turned into a BOY overnight. If we thought you were a BOY before, we were wrong. It is clear to us after this month that now, NOW YOU’RE A BOY! A rambunctious, adventure-loving, risk-taking, LOUD, BOISTEROUS BOY! A BOY, who likes to run full speed at Daddy and body-slam into him. A BOY whose body-slams are so strong, they actually hurt. A BOY who is constantly seeking opportunities to jump off of high places, who relishes every chance to run at breakneck speed, to throw a ball, and to screech at the top of his lungs. You are not afraid to plop yourself back down into the pool, landing hard on your butt with water splashing all around. Or to have water poured over your head, (you’ll even pour it yourself!) as you laugh loudly at the water running down your face and into your eyes.
Before you were conceived, whenever I thought of having children, I always imagined a daughter. I guess, I thought that there would be a familiarity we’d share just by being of the same gender, and that maybe I could more easily relate to a daughter than to a son. But I must tell you how exceedingly happy I am to have a son, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In all your boyishness, you have fulfilled my motherly dreams and longings. From the time of your birth, a bond was built between us, and even in this last month, it has only grown stronger. I honestly cannot imagine that it is possible to have any more of a connection, any more of a bond between mother and child than what you and I share.
Love,
Mama
(P.S. The Pink Flower belongs to the genus Dianthus, its full Latin name is Dianthus deltoides and its common name is maiden pink. It is helpful to have little volumes like this one around for those rare occasions when the Internet search engine fails to deliver.)
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