The day before yesterday Tia called me at work and related this. He was on the kitchen floor – which my siblings-in-law very charitably changed from an old olive green carpet (in a kitchen?!) to a marbled brown-grey vinyl floor last Christmas – fussing from boredom and wanting to be held and played with while she cleaned it with a swiffer. When she was done she turned around to do something else and the fussing stopped. She turned back around and his face was planted on the floor, contentedly licking the sweet swiffer flavor on the floor. She stopped him from this and went back to what she was doing and it happened again.
She relates that yesterday she was Christmas shopping and picked out a large lion stuffed animal for him to play with. Usually he’s happy to play with things in the store and put them back, but when she put this back he made some dispondent babble, so she gave it back for keeps (to buy). He then nuzzled and slept on the lion, sleeping while she was shopping, which is a first.
I haven’t said this, but I can no longer withhold it: He is so cute! I want him to freeze for ten years so I can have him just as he is now. .. in an Eden where he never learns or grows. Every time I despair that his cuteness has reached the apex and it will go downhill from here, he defies expectation!
The last two nights I came home too late to see him to bed, and I can tell he misses me – the usual morning happiness was mingled with cathartic babble and fussing. Tia was preening in the bathroom while I slept in in the bed, and he wandered from his toys in his room to the bathroom with alternate happy and fussy babble and calls. I came to him and he beamed and laughed, but when I picked him up he leaned for his mother, then pled for us both: “Ma-ma.. Pba-pba.”
You shouldn’t use the swiffer so often. Kids need to eat a little dirt every day, you know!
Grandpa Tracy
I’m hearing that broadway tune now, but instead it’s “Every day a little dirt..”