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.