seven months

Dear Auden,

It's been a busy couple of months, huh? That's nearly a third of your life! We uprooted you from our little apartment among the eucalyptus trees and never-ending sunshine, visited all the grandparents in a whirlwind, and slept in enough different beds to confound your little sense of direction. Then we landed in a new house, a new city, a new way of doing things that involves sleeping alone and being entreated to swallow foods of perplexing flavor and texture and not being allowed to grab at all those lovely speaker wires.

Sometimes I forget that you are just a baby. Sometimes I get so caught up in wanting you to take a nap, or lie still for a diaper change, or to stay out of the garbage can for crying out loud, that I forget to honor the gorgeous spark of curiosity in you. You! The you that you are becoming, separate from me, with your own will and your own way.

You are ticklish under your chin. You giggle when I shake my hair in your face. You put everything into your mouth and test it with slobber (plastic kitchen funnel, okay; cell phone, didn't make it). You like to hold my fingers while you fall asleep in the sling, and I marvel at how warm and silky-soft your little hands are. You have a sense of humor now -- you laugh at papa's funny faces, you squeal with delight when I magically reappear from behind a door. You blow a mean raspberry.

You have been crawling for over a month, and are now a pro at pulling yourself up on anything -- steady or not. You have also mastered the one-hand-assisted stand, which lends itself to grabbing at yet more (wires, buttons, books, CDs, plastic bags) toys, and is also useful for crouching down to retrieve dropped things. You are an intrepid adventurer, and have no patience for my limitations, and no regard for danger. Or gravity.

You have discovered the joy of your own voice: you can make it yell, you can pitch it high in an eeeeeeeeee of pleasure, you can do a syllable that sounds like blah blah blah blah. You have also discovered the strangeness of water, and watch with wonder when I pour it on you in the bath. Then you slap it with your hands. Then you flail your legs and splash furiously and breathe in excited huffs when it gets all over your face.

My heart aches at how quickly this time goes. Every day you do something new, adding tiny layers of experience and recognition to your world. And while I celebrate your growth -- what choice do I have? -- part of me wants you to stay small, to always fit in my arms, to always burrow your fuzzy head into my neck when you're tired. Even on days that are hard (and there have been plenty of those), I find solace in the fact that this is the only day like it that I have with you. That doesn't exactly make me less tired, but it makes me more grateful, more attentive, more painfully open to the fleetingness of your infancy.

My sweet, beautiful son, I love you full to bursting.

love,
mama

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