Alice teased me for the first time. I was sitting on the living room couch and she'd pulled herself up using the side table. She looked at me and reached out her hand, opening and closing her fist as if asking me to take hold. I reciprocated her reach and she pulled her hand away. Then, smirking, she reached back towards me. I pushed my hand forward to take hers and she quickly withdrew again. I gasped, smiling. She reached out, I tried to take her hand, she withdrew, this time burst into a giggling laughter that solidified our assumption- she was playing! Teasing!
She has also taken to shaking her head no, rather dramatically. "Want some more avocado?" She responds with an emphatic shake of her head, back and forth, back and forth for several seconds, creating a little wind of her own, swinging hair back and forth across her face. "Want to go in your walker?" Back and forth, back and forth. "Can I wipe your nose?" Her whole body swings, head turning fully from shoulder to shoulder, eyes closed and mouth pressed shut.
Another cold took Alice out of commission for a couple days this week. Her vibrant little personality hunkered down, caved up under a thick, hot blanket of feverish exhaustion. Poor thing. We miss her when she's sick- love the endless cuddling, but crave her chatter and sass. She is a sassy little one. Strong willed. Adamant. Vibrant. What a gift. What a responsibility.
The other night I rocked her through the spike and break of fever. Her body so hot that, stripped down to a diaper, heat radiated from its core. I sweat, anxious and alone with the weight of her. She emitted sad little whimpers. Artificial waves crashed from her sound machine. The blub-blub-blub of the humidifier occasionally chiming into our monotone chorus. All of this illuminated by moonlight through the unshaded window at my back.
There was a before-time, not too long ago, when wee hours laden with rocking and humming would have seemed foreign and feigned. Now, stumbling out of bed, I often don't even bother to open my eyes until I'm seated in that rocking chair, back to the window, and I look down to see my little one, latched and comforted. Or I pass a night like the one of Alice's fever without ever bothering to close my eyes in the first place.
A friend once told me that having children dispelled the illusionary distinction between day and night. Suddenly, lines merge, or are muddied at least, and there is only time, ticking forward, hour into hour, ignorant of which heavenly body stands in the sky. Sleep is no longer counted in hours. (Or counted at all, for that matter.) Because, suddenly, what mattered was not sleep, for beauty or otherwise, but this armful of human who, in their very existence, untied the finishing knot of your knitted self.
Here I am, knit anew. A mother.
She has also taken to shaking her head no, rather dramatically. "Want some more avocado?" She responds with an emphatic shake of her head, back and forth, back and forth for several seconds, creating a little wind of her own, swinging hair back and forth across her face. "Want to go in your walker?" Back and forth, back and forth. "Can I wipe your nose?" Her whole body swings, head turning fully from shoulder to shoulder, eyes closed and mouth pressed shut.
Another cold took Alice out of commission for a couple days this week. Her vibrant little personality hunkered down, caved up under a thick, hot blanket of feverish exhaustion. Poor thing. We miss her when she's sick- love the endless cuddling, but crave her chatter and sass. She is a sassy little one. Strong willed. Adamant. Vibrant. What a gift. What a responsibility.
The other night I rocked her through the spike and break of fever. Her body so hot that, stripped down to a diaper, heat radiated from its core. I sweat, anxious and alone with the weight of her. She emitted sad little whimpers. Artificial waves crashed from her sound machine. The blub-blub-blub of the humidifier occasionally chiming into our monotone chorus. All of this illuminated by moonlight through the unshaded window at my back.
There was a before-time, not too long ago, when wee hours laden with rocking and humming would have seemed foreign and feigned. Now, stumbling out of bed, I often don't even bother to open my eyes until I'm seated in that rocking chair, back to the window, and I look down to see my little one, latched and comforted. Or I pass a night like the one of Alice's fever without ever bothering to close my eyes in the first place.
A friend once told me that having children dispelled the illusionary distinction between day and night. Suddenly, lines merge, or are muddied at least, and there is only time, ticking forward, hour into hour, ignorant of which heavenly body stands in the sky. Sleep is no longer counted in hours. (Or counted at all, for that matter.) Because, suddenly, what mattered was not sleep, for beauty or otherwise, but this armful of human who, in their very existence, untied the finishing knot of your knitted self.
Here I am, knit anew. A mother.
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