Twenty-first Month

Do you know what I started doing this month? Planning your second birthday party. Why so early, you say? Because I know this Time now, a bit sneaky, a bit like sliding down your favorite tall slide at the park...it accelerates. Last year, we passed on a first birthday celebration, I just could not do it, try to harness the energy to get it all together. At the time I figured it was okay to pass. At one it seemed every day was a celebration to you and a big old party would have had little significance except for us grown ups. Still feel a little guilty about it, though. So this year I am on it with a vengeance.


And it stops me then, that I am talking about your birthday, your second one. The one that ushers in the unutterably hard times (so I have heard) and opens the door to three then four then grown up talking five. And I am not sure about this Time thing, feel like it is starting to snatch things from me even as it provides newness and opportunity. It is both good and scary, how this Time is working now.


But back to the birthday, I decided with your Daddy on an idea for the party, a theme you might say, and I am so very excited and the possibilities for creation keep unfolding and spinning about and making me feel like I am a little child, getting ready for a party of my own. It is a simple idea, one I will not reveal just yet, but one that we can all be a part of, all be unique in, have a say. Because it revels in that which no one can take from you, your imagination.


This imagination has sprung forth, appearing out of no where, as imaginary things do, and playing with us daily. It started with your bread, chewed and bitten, that you started 'playing' with, pretending the bread was a car or a lion or gorilla. I know, I know, children should not play with their food, that is what the grown ups say. But then I watched as you played pretend, made it up, and I could not stop that. It was too precious. And so now, we make things from other things, lateral transfers of knowledge and interest. Focus and fun. It is like that all day, exhausting and entertaining and enchanting.


And the talking, oh my lord, the talking. Maybe it was Oregon as you played with your older cousins, watched and listened.

And then tried it out yourselves. It is almost impossible to stop the words, the near constant conversation, with us and each other, your toys and the plants and anyone else that will stop a minute to listen. There are the funny words, Mace says 'doodles' instead of noodles. Owen says uh-oh and ouch every thirty minutes. Then the phrases that stop me dead in my tracks, like Mace with the 'I no doin' anything'. Right. And how did you pick that one up so early?


Trying to remember the month just passed is getting harder, trying to imagine the changes to come even more so. I know there is so much ahead, but could I ask you, Time, to slow for just a few moments everyday so I can better savor what is? Better catch that which I feel I need to remember as it flits away? Would that be possible?

Just some things this month brought to you:

Running without falling, kissing without slobbering.
Linking railroad tracks and building bridges.
Going up and down stairs without the help of our hands.
Jumping (I wish I had captured your first 'attempt' on video, Mace).
Tantrums in public ending in puddles on the ground.
Fake innocent looks when caught scribbling on walls.
Real looks of indignance when accused of above though you are not.
Naming everyone in the room correctly.
Showing kindness to each other daily.
Showing brute aggression to each other hourly (well, not that frequently).
Reading full Dr. Seuss books with Mama.
Breaking my heart open with your smell, your feel, your strength and fragility.


And to you, my boys, baby no longer unless you are asleep on my shoulder in surrender to the other world, the only time you are still, the only time I can breathe in your scent of boy and dirt and sweet and spit and love, love love. Do you know your Mama loves you? So very very much.

And in honor of your 21st and The failure of our iFlip to function, I have now gone back to earlier months and found videos and started to s l o w l y upload them to Flickr. They will be here. Get a load of those alien like early months. Oh, those boys.