mornings

The first hour of the day around here can be so challenging.  The adults in the house all cling to the fading memory of sleep like shipwreck survivors to bits of floating debris, while the youngest resident and his dog are ready to get the dervishes whirling immediately.

There is something about feeling rushed: getting the morning ablutions in, breakfast begun, the dog outside-and-back-and-fed, and food on the table before the Tyrannosaur 2 year old Rex realizes he's hungry...sometimes both the intensity of this chunk of routine and it's quotidian tedium makes me crabby.

I'm beginning to suspect that is one of those cases where the counter intuitive option may be best; perhaps I should rise earlier to sneak up on the routine when it doesn't expect me.

Two Years! (and a little more...)

I know this post is late, and every day later it became, the more I dreaded coming here to write.  There are some negative feedback loops that seem so silly when viewed from any distance at all, but for the looper it does not seem silly at all.

Your birthday falls the day after Christmas, and it always will.  The holiday season is busy, there are many family commitments and important things tugging folks in a dozen directions, and I let that busyness get in the way of taking some time to record the passing of this important milestone, your 24th month of life!

But we did celebrate on your birthday, with family and friends and cupcakes and decorations in the theme of a construction yard.  You are very much into trucks and tractors, and you have a book with lots of hard hat wearing workers doing tons of fun stuff, so we think you enjoyed the pageantry of the party.

This has been a great year, and the two since you came into our lives have been fantastic.  I get pretty sentimental pretty quickly when I think about being a dad - your dad! - but I do enjoy our time together. You are entering a challenging phase in terms of working out your attitude towards respecting your mom and me; you push to get your way and when we hold out, things go downhill quickly.  I recognize that this phase happens for everyone, and we could definitely have it worse, but to see you pivot from happy / smiling to screaming / crying is not fun.

Over the last twelve months you have learned to walk and run, to talk a good bit, to feed yourself (inconsistently, but you have the skill set now); you have become a much better and more consistent sleeper, putting in a decent ~10 hours most nights without too much fussing.  We are still dealing with a protracted transition to bedtime, and that chore has been taking a toll on your mom - hopefully the 2.25 year update to this blog will record our joy at you just going to bed at bedtime!

One of the really surprising joys for me over the last few months has been the development of your memory.  You can recall things that we did together weeks or months ago, and to hear you randomly start talking about the farm (pumpkin patch trips) or the boat (with Mamaw and Granddad in the summer!) or walking on the "blue bridge" and riding the carousel giraffe...it's a lot of fun.  And it's cool to see what you think of as fun or exciting, or what sticks out in your memory.

You do not go to daycare for a variety of reasons, and one casualty of that choice is that you have less interaction with folks your age than most other kids in society at large.  But, we have had some success in the last year getting together with friends of mine and your mom who have children between 0 and 5, and you are starting to develop your own relationships with those little people.  You have one friend in Chicago that you call out by name on a regular basis, a young lady named Harper.  While you have only see her a small handful of times and with large breaks between, she must have made a serious impression on you.  Besides Harper, you have visited a few times with some other friends both here in Chattanooga and briefly in Chicago on one of our trips, and it has been interesting to watch you interact.  The books all say that kids your age don't really "play" together, but rather you play around each other, and that has been our experience to date.  At a friend's house, you will survey the scene, pick out some toys to commandeer, and basically do your own thing while they do theirs, with the occasional huggy/kissy (very sweet to see!) or whiny (when you realize you can't play with every toy at once) bits thrown into the mix.

I'm rambling here.  Months 13 - 24 were awesome, and probably better than 1 - 12 because you are totally turning into a real little person.  You have more personality and you know how to interact, you can tell us (sometimes) what's on your mind in a way that allows us to understand and react...you're funny and sweet and smart and you make me so very, very glad that I'm your dad.

I love you, son.