Unexpected

Laurel is more than a year and a half, almost 20 months old. We commented over dinner last night that we thought she would still be more of a baby at this point. She's most definitely a girl. Tonight in the bathtub she asked M something about if he saw boats at work today (he works near the river). Her language is mostly still babbling at this point, but interspersed with words, and she is most definitely using it to convey meaning. Or at least attempting to convey meaning (there were some tense moments involving the words pierogies, cupcakes, and no in the kitchen before dinner time today - turned out she wanted to eat her pierogies frozen, not boiled). She likes to carry a purse, and read books to herself and today she imagined a lengthy conversation between a paper elephant and a paper lion that she brought home from daycare. She can do stuff, if you give her the chance. Today she wanted to put the umbrella up, and I told her to push the little green circle on the handle. She found the circle but couldn't get it to work. I told her that she was in the right place and needed to push harder. And then I thought about the rationality of instructing a one year old to open an umbrella and prayed that if she managed to push hard enough, she would not also get poked in the eye. (She opened it. Her eyes are fine.) She likes to use a napkin, and carefully spreads it out on her lap, the way we do at dinnertime. She can put laundry away, if you give her one thing at a time and don't mind if it arrives in the drawer wrinkled. She recognizes her name in print, and likes it when we guide her hand to form the letters on a piece of paper. Definitely a girl and not a baby.

I went out with my mom friends this week. I remember the first night out we had over a year ago, testing the waters of new friendship. We knew each other first as new moms, but since then have become true friends, and it's delightful getting to know each of them through stories about their families and work, books they've read and places they've traveled. It is unexpected to me that I should have happened across these women, at exactly the most necessary time. Teddy and Niam and Laurel will all be going to the same daycare in our neighborhood in another couple of weeks. I hope they will be friends and that we won't get called in for a meeting with the director because one of them bit another one.