5.31.2011

18 months (ish)

I don't remember her "stats" from the appointment. I think she weighs around 23 pounds. What I remember is that the nurse had her stand on the scale in the hallway for the first time and it was funny to give her directions about getting up on it and holding very still and not touching the sides, or the red numbers. She has teeth, incisors are working their way through. Her ears were blessedly clear this time.

What marks this stage for me are the words pouring out of her. We went to the garage to put her rake away and she said "shovel" and pointed to the shovel. How did you know that word, I asked her, and she looked quite pleased and said it again. More, please. Down. Elmo. Sky. Moon. Fire truck. Bus. Flower. Bunny.

She sings the alphabet song...m o p la la la e f g.

Her favorite stories to read are the various versions of Mother Goose rhymes. She asks for "ashes" (ring around the rosie) or "pat pat" (patty cake). She also likes Rain, Rain, Go Away. We read a lot. She brings books to us and puts them into our hands, closing our fingers around them. You, she says, while she sits down in our laps.

She climbs on everything. She gets into everything. Yesterday we were hanging out on the front porch. We went camping this weekend and there was still a bunch of bags laying around, half unpacked. Suddenly, Laurel was playing with a half empty bag of bread, taking slices out, taking one bite from each and putting them down in a stack. She has an uncanny ability to locate batteries. I worry about her getting into something poisonous...we talk a lot about Food/Not Food.

On the occasion that M and I go out and do something that resembles our former lives, I am reminded at how freely we lived before Laurel. Before she arrived, I worried at becoming child-centric, that my relationships with friends would disappear and Mark and I would become Daddy and Mommy. I thought that would be bad because it would be boring.

It turns out that relationships are hard to maintain and there never seems to be enough time and if I get together with someone and Laurel is around, our conversation is clipped to half sentence exchanges. But raising a kid turns out to be anything but boring, and I never had so much fun preparing breakfast or looking at traffic go by or wandering through the woods next to a creek looking at flowers and bugs.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can't wait for my next conversation with the big girl. Aunt Mary