Goodnight Noises Everywhere

On Thursday night I am driving home from work when I turn onto a dark road. The road after that one is dark as well and I see the source of the blackout is a tree that hit a telephone pole. Just down the road is the town line and the streets behind it are lit up again. I conclude that it is a windy night, judging from a neighbor’s small tree blown over in their front yard.

Upon my arrival home I recount my tale of fallen trees to Bob, who in turn informs me that our tree in the back yard is now leaning up against the house. It’s a very windy night indeed. There are a few branches in the front yard that I offer to pick up while Matt naps the next day, and before we drift off into sleep we joke that I will also pick up the tree in the backyard.

Crack! Ten minutes later we are peering out Matthew’s bedroom window into the front lawn. A larger branch has fallen from the tree. This worries Bob more than me. He thinks we should evacuate to the basement, whereas I think the worse is already over. We return to bed or in Bob’s case pacing in a worried way and looking out the windows.

“The power just went out!” Bob awakes me at some hour later.

Crack! Crack! Crack! At three thirty in the morning Bob and I stare into the darkness listening to trees snap and fall in the woods behind our house.

“What is happening out there?” I ask him.

“I don’t know,” he replies. The trees around our house have already fallen so there is no longer a need to talk about whether or not we should relocate to the basement.

At seven in the morning I am awaken by Matthew cheerfully babbling and trying to climb onto the bed. “Did you hear all the trees fall down in the middle of the night?” I ask scooping him up and carrying him towards the kitchen to make him some breakfast.

Bob is in the kitchen and on the phone. “You aren’t going to work today are you?” I ask him, “I bet the roads are icy.” I glance outside and get my answer right away.

All over the street and in the yards are fallen icy limbs from trees. The ones that stayed upright are weighed towards the ground with frozen water. The power line is down at the end of the street and there is a tree sticking out of a neighbor’s rooftop. Bob and I take turns staying inside with Matthew and walking around to survey the neighborhood and commiserate with neighbors. Outside looks as though the Once-ler came to town.

At night, still without electricity or heat, which will be days not hours before it is turned on again, we camp out in the basement room, the only room with heat thanks to the propane fireplace that was installed just one month ago. Feeling cozy, I read to Matthew his newest bedtime favorite, the classic Goodnight Moon by battery powered lantern light before tucking him for the night into his pack n play. He does not like this new sleeping arrangement and begins to wail, making it not so cozy anymore.

“If I had to choose anyone to be in a dark room with a screeching one-year-old after an ice storm it would still be you,” I tell Bob who is lying on the floor with our bed comforter wrapped around him like a sleeping bag.

“What?” he can’t hear me over Matthew.

So I tell him again but louder.

Santa & Sundaes

There is this game we play. Matthew hands me a cotton purple soda bottle from his picnic set and I slug exaggerated gulps from it. Then I realize it is actually poisoned and promptly pass out, resulting in belly laughs.  When I “come to” Matt hands me the drink again and seconds later I’m sprawled back out on his floor.

There is a saying that having a kid is the same as agreeing to be a kid again. While Bob vacuums and dusts to prepare for our Christmas Eve party in two weeks, Matt and I busy ourselves making a fort with blankets, chairs, and pillows, in the living room. I read him Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? in our tent, both of us making hand motions to the “sound” of lightning.

Just last weekend we visited an old friend’s house to make cookies. It’s a house where I have many fond memories at and very place my baby shower was held but with a one-year-old in tow it transformed into a house of doom. Open stairwells, scissors and knitting needles menacingly poking out the tops of baskets and tote bags, glass casing around a stereo, and a piano were some of the dangers I noticed while looking around. While the rest of us made cookies Matthew roamed about wearing adult sized crocs he had thieved from somewhere, and carrying a jar of sprinkles. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw him clomping towards me carrying a china teapot. Once the task of cookie decoration/feasting began to feel a little redundant, the three adults and Matthew sat down to watch Elmo’s Christmas Countdown, perhaps the start of what may become a new holiday tradition in years to come.

On the subject of traditions, we put up our tree. Then of course there was the visit to Santa. Matthew and Santa’s meeting was successful if not met by little resistance on Matthew’s part. Afterwards we enjoyed our sundae topped with the works in a room lit by Christmas trees.

The New And Old Us

At about this time last year Bob and I signed all the necessary papers to our new home. We had chosen the-house-with-the-big-kitchen-but-only-two-bedrooms-upstairs, which was a twenty minute drive west of our apartment. Christmas was coming, so in between thoughts of ‘this wall will have to painted, I want to put shelves on that wall, those floral couches are being donated to Salvation Army, our bed will be on the opposite side to face the windows, does it smell in here?’ we were responsible for introducing Matthew, seven months at the time, to the magical holiday season upon us.

It was a shame that he hated our new house with a vengeance. It might have the many bowls of vinegar left out to absorb the hindering mix of dog and cigarette smoke smell from the previous owners. Or that he had just leaned to crawl but was confined to the pack ‘n play while his parents disinfected, steam cleaned, and scrubbed every room. Or perhaps he didn’t feel at home yet with his toys and books stored in cardboard boxes.

I didn’t feel at home right away either. Our apartment furniture, a plaid hand me down sofa set, a table missing a chair, and mismatched bedroom furniture from Bob and my childhoods, made our apartment look cozy and fun. In the house it looked mismatched like the Land of Lost Toys. I also knew the mark of the New Year meant I would have to begin job searching and I was rather comfortable in my routine of mommy & me classes, playgroup on Wednesdays, and lunch dates.

Before we knew it we had unpacked and were receiving all of our mail at our new address. Our Christmas tree had been put up and I learned how to work our new fangled oven with buttons instead of knobs. Matthew had his first official Christmas morning, opening presents and knocking ornaments off the tree, in the only home he would refer to one day as his childhood home. Over the winter the white walls of his bedroom were painted blue and the dated brass ceiling fan was replaced with a baseball one. His toys and books were emptied into white wicker baskets with blue gingham lining. It was our first room makeover and certainly not our last.

Over the course of the year, more rooms were repainted and I was able to find a job with flexible enough hours to keep up my motherhood activities. We purchased new dining and living room furniture, which I sometimes look at it and laugh at how grownup it looks.  Bob and my bedroom furniture is still mismatched but with a new bedspread to compliment the cherry chocolate paint on the wall, it’s a dedication to the old and new us.

This year with Christmas once again around the corner and now that we are settled into our home it is just that, our home. Once again we are introducing Matthew to the magical season upon us, but I have a feeling a lot more ornaments will be knocked off of the tree this year.

PBSing

 

Clap Clap Clap. Arms in the Air! Clap Clap Clap. Arms in the air! Matthew has taught me a new game to play with Lego blocks. Or maybe Bob was the one who started it. The three of us are sitting on the living room floor clapping them together three times and then putting our arms up over our heads. After a few moments Matthew picks up all the Lego blocks and dumps them in a toy wagon, which he then drives into the couches over and over on purpose.

“You shouldn’t have given him that candy,” I hiss under my breath to Bob like a sitcom wife.

“ I didn’t know the sugar would make him this hyper!"

“Wheee,” Matthew has now climbed into the wagon on top of the Legos. Bob and I give in and laugh.

We’ve recently scaled back the hours of our live in nannies, Curious George, Sid the Science Kid, and Elmo, to only a couple hours during the weekends. What I mean to say is that we cut back Matthew’s television watching time for fear that he was turning into a bit of a zombie anytime he sat down to watch TV. .

In just one week with the new TV rules in place we became the type of family to go for long walks outside and make homemade pizzas for dinner. Bob and I started to play board games together at night, while Matthew mastered shape sorting in his spare time. There is something more rewarding about watching your one and a half year old conquer shape sorting beyond the circle piece that is more rewarding than watching him sit through the Toy Story movie.

Ecotarium

Kenda the polar bear

The Ecotarium, an indoor/outdoor and science/nature museum that we stumbled upon  last winter when Matthew was only nine months old. It's close by and we met some friends there for story hour, where we were served hot cocoa and read a book about wild animals. 



After the story hour Matthew and his friends played inside of a wooden boat in the Discovery Room, which was full of books, puzzles, and puppets.

After we left the Discovery Room we walked outside along a paved nature trail that lead us past a working train reminiscent of an 1860’s steam engine, and to a Polar Bear named Kenda. Charmed by what would soon become one of many afternoons at the Ecotarium, that night I ordered a museum membership online.

“When I was a kid it was called the New England Science Center,” Bob tells me sounding one hundred and fifty years old, “All I remember is that they had an antelope called Kirk’s Dik Dik.” To this day he snickers at the memory.

Seven months since finding our new favorite museum Matthew tugs me by the hand down an unpaved trail that leads to an exhibit of river otters. The river otters appear to be missing but Matthew amuses himself by watching the toy ball float around the water. “Ball?”

“Come on let’s go look at the pumpkins,” I suggest to him and we hike back to the paved area where hundreds of painted pumpkins and Jack O lanterns line the pavement paths, on display for Halloween.

“Ooohh,” Matt points in appreciation, not at one of the pumpkins but to the bright green dinosaur tracks on the cement that lead inside the museum, he is now just noticing for the first time. Every couple of steps he stops to bend down and admire one. Once we are inside Matthew heads straight for the elevator to bring him to his favorite part of the museum.

Soon we are standing in a darkly lit room with once alive animals posed rigidly behind glass enclosures. The exhibit is called The African Communities. The Kirk’s Dik Dik among others diligently teach us that over-population, can cause competition for food, water and space.

Next we stroll back outside down a paved path, passing a couple of skunks, a Red Fox, and a few different types of birds in cages. Matthew runs ahead or lags behind the whole way. When we reach Kenda, she is sitting outside of her cave looking out at us.

 “Doggie!” Matthew points her out to me.

The Olive Story

Matthew climbs up onto Bob’s lap in the dinning room chair beside mine and starts eating the olives I had set aside from my Greek salad.

“He likes olives,” I observe as Matthew finishes about eight olives in less than eight seconds. Then Matthew opens his mouth and the chewed olives fall out of his mouth and onto their laps.

“He doesn’t like olives,” I state the obvious. Bob looks at the dinning room chair covered in olives and sighs that that having kids is hard work. Wait until the day Matt runs into the house with muddy boots for the first time, look forward to the blog that will be named “Bob’s Trip To The Cardiologist.”

Spit up olives aside, Bob isn’t the only one who thinks this parenting business is hard work. I read the parent magazine and books but what they fail to mention is that sometimes it is such hard work to play with your child. Matthew has this jungle toy that spins three balls. It's his favorite toy and only  if two balls are spinning on opposite sides of each other and the third ball is completely out of his sight.


“You know him so well,” Bob marvels after I explain the rules of the jungle toy to him after proclaiming that Matthew hates it.

It’s all trial and error. I once thought he liked olives.

Loch Mess Monster

 






















By the time Matthew finishes filling his bucket with dirt it will be his bedtime. He and I are playing in one of the many patches of dirt in our backyard and only a quarter of the dirt from his shovel actually makes it into the bucket at a time.

It is time to for dinner and Matthew and I haven’t finished building our mud castle yet but there is a new recipe for sweet potato biscuits that I want to try, so to keep him occupied inside I take out some markers and construction paper for him to scribble on.

“Matthew Robert!” Bob’s sudden uproar and use of middle name interrupts my thoughts of whether a knife will suffice for a square biscuit cutter, “ Look what you did to the couch!” Matthew runs towards me from the living room into the kitchen bawling and throwing looks of betrayal over his shoulder towards his normally even keeled father.

There are orange and red scribbles on the cushions in the next room. Bob gets out  cleaning solution and paper towels while Matthew  goes to his bedroom to play with his toys. A little while later Matt comes back out of his room and stands as close to Bob as he can manage, watching him spot clean the cushions back to their normal color.

“Hi?” Matthew finally grins up at him. Are we still friends?
“Hi Matthew,” Bob begrudgingly replies. I’m sorry I yelled at you.

Yogging

 



















 
























Matthew and I are trying this new fad called uh, jogging. I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft j. I'm not sure but apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild (-- Anchorman quote).

The jogging stroller is stored in the part of the basement with Matthew’s sled and other out of use items. It hasn’t been used since spring and I have to wipe the cobwebs off and pop on the front wheel before we are ready to go. We set out to loop the neighborhood in a walk/run combination. It’s early in the morning and a fresh chill of air blows freckled red, green, and yellow leaves from the trees. Matthew claps and cheers whenever we speed up.

On our third time around the block we round a corner and the front stroller wheel pops off. The stroller and I collide. Some neighbors of ours  nod at me as they pass and in an attempt to save face I jog the rest of the way home despite the scrapes and new bruises already forming on my legs.

Matthew Molasses

 




















It’s your day to do whatever you please. You may explore the Children’s Museum at your snail like pace and I promise not to wipe your hands down with hand sanitizer in between exhibits. Oh look a windowsill to sit on near the ticket line. You could very well spend another ten more minutes sitting on it but didn’t you want to see what was inside the museum? Oh you don’t?

Now we have made it inside the museum and are looking at the first exhibit of turtles. Sort of like the kind you would see in the pet store. Do you remember the last time you were here and you couldn’t even walk yet? Speaking of walking..

Ah the construction zone. A little boy’s dream room of car tracks, dress up construction clothes, hard hats, and a tunnel that looks like a bunch of tires. There you go crawling through the tunnel! Look at you collecting ramps and bridges for the cars to drive over. You want to sit in the front loader? Sure! Whatever that is!

That sure looks as exciting as the windowsill was to sit in. Did you know this museum has three floors?


Playing the Pan at Boston Black.. A City Connects. Petting a real-to-you Water Buffalo at the Japanese House. Sitting in a car with a surprised look on your face at the working radio in the Playspace. Coloring on an easel in the Art Gallery. Filling your shopping basket with limes, lemons, eggs, and potatoes at the pretend grocery store. Moving around the giant chess pieces at The Common. Playing the tubes just like Blue Man Group in the airplay exhibit.


I














Cheerfully splashing in a water puddle under a Caution Wet Floor sign in a room full of toy boats and water.

Out comes the travel sized Purell from my pocket. There was human hair in the puddle. ” You give me one of your happiest smiles, softening my germ phobic heart. “Would you like to go see the turtles again instead?”

You would be delighted to.

Letting Go

“Sometimes when I pick Matthew up he wraps his arms around me so tightly, like he is worried that I will let go of him before he is ready for me to,” Julie tells me one day when I drop Matthew off for daycare. She watches him in her home anywhere from twenty to twenty-five hours a week. Matthew is very much at home there, whether it is squabbling with the other kids over toys, chasing their part Akita part Snuffleupagus around the yard, or rooting through their kitchen cabinets.


We chose Julie not because her house was in a quiet neighborhood, or even that she provided packets of information for us to take home. It was because during the interview, when Matthew was crawling around her living room she put her hand on corner edge of the coffee table to prevent him from bumping his head. It was something that she had probably not thought about while she was doing it, which was the type of person I wanted watching Matthew while I was at work, a mom with some experience.

 After leaving her home after our interview we went out for dinner and as we were leaving the restaurant we happened to see Julie and her family arriving, evidently a good sign!

“Bye Mama!” Matthew says waving at after me as I walk to my car, “Bye Mama! Bye!” His goodbyes are cheerful and frantic at the same time.

Oh that little Matthew! With his fork in one hand and ravioli in the other during meals, who walks around the house with a Grover stethoscope around his neck and carrying an empty medicine spoon. How quickly the time will pass and one day he won’t remember that there was ever a time he preferred blueberries to chocolate. Will he remember Julie or will she get lost along with the memories of afternoons spent playing with Legos and Play Doh? Already the thought of him as a teenager engulfs me with sense of longing for his babyhood. The reason for this is a simple one, I am afraid he will let go of me before I am ready for him to.

Houseguests Like Us

 



 















Our summer vacation

Instead of going away for vacation this week we took a staycation. Our agenda was packed with trips to nearby playgrounds, parks, and museums, but we made sure to schedule enough time for outdoor play, free time, and lazy naps. One of the highlights would have been Matthew eating his first ice cream cone. By the time we left the restaurant we used three-quarters of the wipes in my diaper bag.

After that we drove over to the next town to a state park with a lake to swim in. Up until then Matthew seemingly only enjoyed swimming in chlorinated bodies of water so we didn’t bother to pack his bathing suit or a swim diaper. Except Matthew took to the water as though the letter M in his name stood for manatee. Bob and I wondrously looked on while he sat in water piling rocks and not minding slimy fish swimming just a few feet away from him.

This week we visited places both new and old to us, ordered takeout for meals, and had the comfort of sleeping in our own beds each night.It was as every bit relaxing as a vacation away from home.

Cat In The Garage

The simple explanation is that there is a cat in our garage. The fact that we don’t own a cat and that I only went in there to get a pair of sneakers in the first place complicate things.  Currently the garage is packed with storage boxes and furniture while the basement is in throws of renovation. The cat is hidden somewhere among the boxes but refuses to come out even when I leave a bowl of milk in the driveway.

“Remember last night when you asked me if the noise we heard was thunder?” Bob recalls “It was probably the cat knocking something over instead.”

Matthew has his morning snack in the driveway while I hold out some tuna on a plate to a bunch of boxes. A neighbor passes by and reports that no, she is not missing a cat, but the another family lost their orange cat a couple months ago.

I have no idea if the cat was orange or not.

While Matthew bounces his ball on the driveway and I am scheming up my next plan the  the cat, grey with black markings and big green eye comes out of hiding to eat the tuna.

“Keytee,” Matthew enthuses. The cat startles and runs back into her hiding spot. “Key?”

We leave the door open for awhile and the next morning when everything is cleared out of the garage to look for the cat it appears to have left in the manner it arrive (when no one was looking). From the fur lined seat cover it is apparent that the cat picked Matt’s old baby swing as its hiding spot.We hope the cat made it home safely.

Pajama Day

Before I went back to work I spent all my time emailing or taking baby activity classes as my way of staying linked to the “outside world”. I was the one putting on a puppet show for my newborn who was perfectly content to stare at his mobile all day. 


I also made a point to leave the house everyday unless the roads were snowy in which I would bundle him up and take him out in the sled for fresh air.

There is an excerpt from the book Perfect Madness Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “Everyone was too busy with “activities.” It was hard to just spend time just sort of vegetating in the sun because our kids, overstimulated by daily story hours and Gymboree, couldn’t just play in the sandbox, or run around the flagpole, or climb without running to us every five minutes. Without our having constantly to explain interpret, facilitate the world for them.” 

That was me in a nutshell until I decided to take back control of my planner.  It’s now a Tuesday that I have off from work and the only thing written on my planner for today is Pajama Day as my reminder to not make any plans for the day.

Instead of leaving the house I make blueberry pancakes and cut them into fun shapes with cookie cutters, Matt and I dance to the Barenaked Ladies, and he jams his ball popper with blocks and markers. We take a walk around the block at snails pace so he can inspect every rock and fallen leaf he sees and we read the same Frog and Toad story three times in a row. When Bob comes home from work we are blowing bubbles on the lawn instead of unpacking the car after a day trip. It was a relaxing day!

The Hugging Bandit

Fourteen and a half month old Matthew has yet to kiss me.

“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?” I ask him one afternoon while we sit together on the couch watching a movie. It’s high school all over again, except instead of a character in Empire Records saying, “Damn the man! Save the Empire!” Elmo’s shrill voice sings about weather to the off tune of Jingle Bells. Matthew looks straight ahead at the television instead of answering me.

“Soon he will be giving you these lovely big sloppy kisses,” the pediatrician said at his nine month well-baby check up, “Just you wait.”

Hello Pot? It’s Kettle. Something that I have yet to mention is that I find kissing and hugs unbearable in most circumstances, unless it’s with the people who live in my own home. I’ll stroke and whisper sweet nothings to the neighbor’s frou frou giant poodles but with most people I am all awkward elbows and back thumps. I wonder where Matthew gets it from?

When Matthew helps me weed the flower garden by raking his blue plastic rake through the bark mulch I ask him if he is having fun.

“Yeah Mama,’ he walks over to where I am sitting, close enough so that I can smell the cologne of his bug spray and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Mama?”

He blows me a raspberry and then another. It’s close enough.

Let's Grow Old Together

 
















 “Papa didn’t like the beach either, it was the sand that bothered him the most,” my grandmother reminisces to me on the phone, after I recap our trip to Maine to her, “We once went for a picnic with all five kids and he was the only one to get sand in his sandwich.”

 I share with her that aside from his first trip to the beach, we visited the library last week, that he calls all animals doggies, and loves to eat blueberries. I don’t mention the choking incident. 

Matthew made it thirteen months and seventeen days without choking but then one morning he was snacking on mushy watermelon and cheerios when it happened. I saw him bite off a piece of watermelon larger than he could chew. He does this all the time or he shovels ten meticulously cut up pieces into his mouth at once. A few seconds later I saw him frantically gulping for air and quite literally choking to death.

I leaped out of my chair and wrestled with the straps of the high chair with the same difficulty I would have if I were wrestling an octopus. Then I whacked Matt on back until the watermelon went flying out and sliding across the kitchen floor amongst scattered cheerios

Once at a party I went to a baby choked on a teething biscuit. Not breaking conversation, the father whacked the baby over his knee a few times and the biscuit came up and out followed by a puddle of spit up. The parents cleaned it up with a burp cloth and carried on talking as if it were perfectly normal to save a life while discussing sautéed red potatoes.

I, on the other hand, was not nearly as composed. When Matthew wailed I announced that it was happiest sound I had ever heard! Those ten seconds  felt longer than my pregnancy with him did.

Trip to Maine

 















Here we are embarking on the milestone of our first family vacation, as a flock of three. The car is stocked with toys, snacks, and borrowed books on tape to keep our much-loved crab cake busy during the two-hour car ride to Maine.

Lighthouses. Blueberries for Sal. The bookstore where older versions of otherwise new books are all sold at 90% off. The place Bob proposed to me. Lobster Calzones. Childhood memories of vacations there. Td Banknorth on every corner saving me a bundle in ATM fees. Salty air. Candy and t-shirt shops. There was so much I was looking forward to.

Matthew fell asleep ten minutes after we pulled out of the driveway and stayed that way until we arrived. The car items we packed wound up being quite helpful a day later, when we were driving around lost in Portland, on our way to the children’s museum.

We stopped off at York’s Wild Kingdom Zoo. Everywhere we walked ducks roamed the sidewalks pleasing Matthew to no end. During lunch he chose to sit backwards on the handle of his wagon instead of at the on the grass at the picnic table. He looked adorable. We left the zoo as happy as clams in mud.

We checked into our hotel room and walked down to the beach. “Matthew, look at the ocean,” we crooned. “Do you feel like you are standing in a giant sandbox?” Bob nudged a plastic shovel into his hand.

“Doggie!” Dropping the plastic shovel, he pointed at a Welsh Sheepdog trotting by with a tennis ball in its mouth. It’s not exactly a moose or other Maine-y type of animal but he stood captivated for several moments watching it play fetch.

Then Bob did the unthinkable and brought Matthew into the ocean with him. It goes without saying that the boy, whose mother fills up his kiddie pool with warm buckets of water from the kitchen, enjoyed it as much as a clam in an angler’s boat.

On the second day at the beach, we went shell collecting. It was all well and fine until I put a crab in the bucket. Matt took one look at it, threw the bucket, and started to cry with an exaggerated frown on his face. We spent the rest of the morning swimming in the hotel pool.

Each afternoon Matthew took long grumpy naps past dinnertime. So we stayed out on the boardwalk until ten-thirty every night, eating ice cream from Dairy Queen, and taking rides on the merry-go-round. To think that Bob and I once were a couple who criticized parents that kept their children out past nightfall. Add that to the list of things we said that we would never do as parents.

On the morning that it was time to leave for home, it was pouring rain outside. Matthew had woken up still clutching the baseball printed rubber duck we had won him at the arcade the night before. Honestly, this trip to Maine did not feel much like a vacation for Bob and me. We put so much effort into planning day trips, fretting over Matthew, and tiptoeing around his nap schedule. Perhaps next year we won’t try so hard at relaxing and instead wait and see if it happens on it’s own.

Birthday Party Season

 Only close friends and family members were invited to Matthew’s first birthday party. We ate pizza and the gorgeous homemade cake that Sarah made. Bob opened the presents while Matthew crinkled the envelope that the card came in, and I took pictures. Aside from the pile of gifts, it wasn’t much different from any other family get together.

Aside from  Matthew, his friends, whom we met through various activities or classes this past year, also recently turned one. It’s been a blur of birthday parties big and small.

Surprisingly none of the babies went gaga (pun intended) over the cake. In most instances, they just licked frosting off their fingers or broke off small pieces. Meanwhile the adults had their cameras ready waiting for that cake face money shot. Perhaps it’s not so surprising seeing most of them had never tasted chocolate before now.

 Life with a one-year-old feels a bit like an ongoing game of hide and seek. Looking for the keys? Try the play stove. Shoe? In the bathtub. The block with the letter B? Under the bag of potatoes inside of the lazy susan. Wake up cries at 6 a.m.? Hide under the covers. The ball? Behind the cable box. Oh the green one? Check the shoe in the bathtub

As I type this Matt is playing with blocks and making kissing noises. I took a break to join him on the floor and copy the noises. This cracks him up for some reason and he threw himself on my lap for a hug. You found me.

Creature from the Playskool Lagoon

From inside his crib I heard Matthew happily “talking” to his blankie Banana Who. “Mathew, where are you..?” I teased on my way from the hallway to his bedroom, “Are you in the closet? Nope. Oh you’re in your crib! Hello there-”

But wait. Where did Matthew go? Where was the boy clad in mismatched pajamas that I had read Frosty the Snowman (his choice not mine) to before bed? The pajamas were the same but the boy standing up in his crib was covered with red polka dots. A food allergy? Poison sumac? Reaction the vaccines he had last week?

The pediatrician examined him and confirmed  that it was an allergic reaction to one of the vaccines he  had at his last visit. She assured us that it didn’t require any medication nor was it contagious. The rash cleared up on it’s own after only a couple of days.

In The Know

 















  

Recently I went hiking at a nearby state park with some friends and their children who are all close in age to Matthew. Here we were trekking along dirt paths lined with Rhododendrons admiring the man-made waterfalls and taking in the calming presence nature has to offer. Except that it wasn’t actually calming to me at all because A) I’m afraid of snakes and expected to see a snake parade slither out in front of us at any moment and B) My friend Kate was explaining everything around us to her daughter like a good mother is supposed to.

 I would occasionally chime in with some commentary;

“Matthew do you see the bird on the tree? Look at the bird eating the berries off of the tree.”

“Yeah,” he replies with a big smile. He is in a delightful phase of agreeing whole heartily to anything you tell him.

“I think it’s a Hummingbird? Did you know that they are the only bird who can fly backwards?” 

“Yeah,” fidgeting with the flaps on his sunhat, only half listening.

“Do you see the ducks swimming in the water?”

He's no longer listening and distracted by a playful breeze. He watches intently as it shakes the leaves on the tree and makes rippled patterns in the water. Then he blows wind out of his own mouth and clapps his l hands together. He doesn't need me to observe our surroundings for him. He's busy absorbing things that I haven't paid attention to in years.