Dear M,

Well, I’m a little late getting to your eighteen month update, but it’s just as well, since a lot of things have changed in the last few weeks. Like the fact that you are now a talking machine, and love to imitate everything we say. If I put you in a cage and threw a blanket on top, people would think we lived with a parrot. We spend the day tossing words back and forth … I enunciate them slowly and clearly, and you stagger about them like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. Occasionally you’ll land in the center and utter a perfect imitation, only to stumble off in another direction on your next try.

You have always been good at expressing the extremes of your life; screaming in frustration, laughing with joy, crying in pain. But your newfound speech is starting to shed light on the vast plains that inhabit the space and time between those mountains. I am sometimes startled by the glimpses this gives me, like when you pointed to the circles adorning one of our cloth grocery bags and declared them to be bubbles. And good god do you see flowers everywhere, resting your little fingers on your nose and twisting them back and forth in the sign, making them materialize where my eyes had glazed past them before. As an adult so much of my life is predictable and known, I fear I have grown blind to the wonder that surrounds me. I know what time the sun will come up and where, I know what the moon, stars and snow are, and I hardly give the items on the grocery shelf a second glance, as I zoom up and down the aisles in a quest to finish as quickly as possible. I have to remind myself that all of these things are new and mysterious to you, and I am grateful for the opportunity to slow down and see the way you see, instead of the way I “know”.

You have also started dancing. Not that you didn’t before, but it would only be for a moment or two, as a particular song seized your fancy. Now you’ll get down anywhere, anytime. You were sitting in the grocery cart when the Stray Cat Strut came on, and you started rocking your body, pumping your arms and kicking your feet. I had to agree when a stranger approached and told me it was the cutest thing she had ever seen. You love to move and groove, swaying your tiny hips, stomping your feet and waving your arms.

You are trying desperately to master jumping … squatting down and springing up with all your might. I can’t tell for certain, but I swear your feet are starting to leave the ground. You love it when I offer my hands and give you the final boost you need to momentarily break free from gravity’s pull. I have also seen you balance tenuously on one foot as you navigate an obstacle, arms outstretched, leg wobbling, and yet you always manage. And I’m a little taken aback when you run through the house, left scratching my head and wondering how walking evolved into running without me noticing. You climbed onto one of the kitchen chairs the other day, and immediately attempted to summit the table, and surely would have succeeded if I hadn’t intervened. Your father loves to take advantage of your penchant for imitation, and does all sorts of goofy walks – hands on hips, stomach thrust forward – which you immediately parrot, leaving me doubled over and shaking with laughter.

You have a wicked sense of humor, and love nothing more than partaking in these silly games with your papa. I don’t know how he thinks these things up, but the other day he stuck his tongue out, laboriously pushed it back in with his finger, got an alarmed look on his face, plopped his tongue out of his mouth again, and quickly shoved it back in with his finger. No words were exchanged, but you somehow understood that his tongue was misbehaving, and cackled with glee each time it escaped from his mouth.

When your papa finishes brushing your teeth each night, he hands you the toothbrush. Lately, instead of sucking off the strawberry-flavored paste, you shove both hands behind your back and look up at us expectantly. We oblige, and inquire as to the whereabouts of the toothbrush. You look back at us innocently, and whip an empty hand out from behind your back, twisting it ever so slightly to make sure everyone can see it, looking it over with big eyes. We exclaim that we don’t see a toothbrush, where in the world is the toothbrush? You look up at us slyly but can’t stop a grin from creeping onto your face as we ask, with increasing wonder, where the toothbrush is. You hold out for as long as you can stand it, and then pull the toothbrush from behind your back with a triumphant flourish. I thought this game was positively adorable. Until you started doing it with an oatmeal-coated spoon while sitting in your high chair.

Speaking of eating, your love affair with food has finally ended (I knew this day would come). Meals have turned into a very unpleasant time for me, although I try to make sure it is not so for you. You’ve taken to frequently refusing food, although I think it has less to do with your tastes, and more to do with a new understanding that you can control what happens in your life. Things you refused outright one night will be gobbled down with abandon the next, which makes this very hard for me. I almost wish you were picky and only liked three foods. At least then I could count on those three foods. Right now I can’t count on anything. Additionally, you’ve decided you would rather play with your food than eat it. Food is dissected, squished, thrown, and swept onto the floor. Very little goes in your mouth unless I put it there, but when I set you on the floor you cry and cling to me, obviously hungry. By dinnertime I have had enough, and recently arranged for your father to take complete responsibility for you during that meal, so I can sit and eat my food in peace.

But other than that, our time together is usually pretty fun. You brought out your beloved “Right At Home” pocket book today, removed the animals from their storage pockets, and busied yourself cramming them into the various pages. You pushed the fish into the kangaroo’s pouch, pointed to the kangaroo and said “mama”. I’m not sure how the fish or kangaroo felt about this arrangement, but I felt my heart thud in my chest as I thought about what the word mama must mean to you, and the joy (and sometimes abject terror) I experience as I fill that role in your life.

As I type this, Picasa is scanning the computer, searching for every picture on the hard drive. There is a small progress bar that shows thumbnails, and I watch it, my mouth agape, as mini stop-action movies of your life play before my eyes. I try so hard to engrave every moment we spend together into my memory, but these pictures remind me what an impossible task this is. I realize that each day I cannot imagine you other than how you are at just that moment. It’s always a shock to see you with shorter hair, chubbier thighs, not able to walk, crawl or roll over. It’s hard to imagine that I will look back on the pictures I took today and feel that sense of surprise, when you seem so perfect and visceral and here.

It makes me sad to think I’ve lost those memories of you, will lose the memory of today, even. I realize this is the nature of motherhood, however. I remind myself that I am not losing you, that I will never lose you. You will be with me forever, and for every memory that is lost to time, there will be so many more to take its place. I do wish I could remember them all, though.

Love,
Mama

P.S. 6:30 AM is not an acceptable time to start the day. Neither is 7:30 AM. Got it?