Skip to main content

If you keep feeding them, they just keep growing

A couple weeks ago, we went to the playground with the giant rock-climbing wall. I turned to grab my camera, took my eyes off Sweet Boy for a minute, and the next thing I knew, he was 12 feet off the ground, standing proudly on the platform at the top of the wall, waving and smiling to me. I looked at Big Daddy and said, "How the hell did he get up there?!" He climbed, replied my nonchalant spouse. "He can't climb up there by himself! He's too little!"

The day after that mindblowing rock-wall climb, we were sitting at lunch when I heard a tiny knock at the door. Standing on our steps was Sweet Boy's little buddy from across the street: "Can Sweet Boy come over to play?" Imagine my delight -- his first come-out-to-play request! I watched Sweet Boy take one last gulp of PB&J then charge out the door and across the street with our friend's mom. I yelled after him "just 20 minutes! I'll be over soon!" And I turned to my husband and said, "Can he go over there by himself? Doesn't he need me? He's not too little?"

Today we went to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and as I started unpacking the car with all our jackets and backpacks, I reached for the stroller. Both Sweet Boy and Big Daddy looked at me like I was nuts. "I can walk, Mommy," said the little one. "He can walk, hon," said the big one. But it's far! We're going to be walking all day! He'll be tired and whiny! He's too little! But once again, I was wrong. He's a big boy now. He walked and walked and walked all day, and only complained one time right at the end of the day (when all three of us were dragging and whiny).

These are just a few examples of the countless ways my son has shocked me with his maturity in the last couple weeks. There's also the vast and ever-growing vocabulary, the name spelling and writing, the wild and imaginative stories, the big boy pants straight through the night. The most significant grown-up boy development in the last few weeks has been the easy daycare drop-off. Who knew an exuberant, happy child waving bravely to me from the window could bring me to tears just as quickly as the miserable, crying one could?

It's no exaggeration that he's growing before our eyes, every day becoming more and more fun and interesting and intelligent and amazing. Yet in our busy day-to-day we often miss the little things. Which is why we decided to take this week off, to enjoy a family staycation, to soak up every wonderful minute with this little dreamboy. Because he's not so little anymore, and we just don't want to miss a thing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ottomania!

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about ottomans. A ridiculous amount of time, actually, given the number of other things I truly should focus my thoughts on. I find, though, that when the world outside gets scary (and scary is a truly relative term these days) I turn to online shopping for things I don't really need. Actually, it's more like online browsing; I rarely purchase. I spend hours searching for, oh, erasable colored gel pens or standing desks or all-natural curly-hair gel or the perfect black sweater. (Yes, these are things I've fixated on over this winter; I still haven't clicked "buy" nor settled on any of them.) This week, it's ottomans. By the way, my girl  BrenĂ©  Brown would call this behavior numbing . I'm okay with that. Because online browsing is way less detrimental (so far) than chain smoking, which is what I'd really like to do when the world is scary. It's a way to escape, to daydream, to focus on things tha...

Grown-up words and what to do about them

We know our children are little sponges who soak up all our words, actions, mannerisms. They are often parrots, but even more often they are fun house mirrors, amplifying and exaggerating our own idiosyncratic behaviors until we cringe, laugh, or hang our heads in shame. Yesterday while cleaning up his toys, Sweet Boy got frustrated trying to put one of his train pieces together. Instead of crying or raging like he would have a few weeks ago, he threw the toy down and yelled, "Oh, fuck it!" Oh. My. Lord. The air was sucked out of the room. We were suspended in time and space, frozen as our eyes met. I took a split second to consider my options: (1) Freak out and yell at him---scare him into never saying it again; (2) Ask him to repeat what he said, because maybe I heard it wrong and I don't want to overreact; (3) Ask where he heard that word, stuff his mouth full of soap, then call the offending child's parent immediately (a la The Christmas Story ); (4) Ignore it so ...

Why I Occupy

I marched in the Occupy Philly protest last Saturday, and I've been trying to find the words to describe it all week. People who know me look puzzled when I tell them, and I've been trying to explain why this movement has taken root in my heart. Last Saturday, for a few brief hours, I stood up to the anxiety, anger, frustration, and fear that has gripped me for the last few years. For a few brief hours, I marched with people who want better for me and you and this entire country, people who may be ideologically different but stand together because they believe there’s still hope for this democracy, that there’s still a chance that our government will take action for the people and not for the corporations that fund their campaigns. There’s a perception that the Occupy Wall Street movement is simply a mob of young, disenfranchised 20-somethings who have nothing better to do than sleep on city sidewalks to disrupt the lives of those of us with jobs. Revolutions are ...