Tag!
It’s 8:45 pm; Adalyn has usually dozed off while Sheaff
rocks her to sleep. But tonight, he is
making faces at her, and she cannot stop giggling. The squealing, belly-deep,
gives-you-the-hiccups kind of giggles.
The kind that makes me grateful. The kind that makes the timing of bedtime
much less important, because I know this is one of those snapshots to remember.
The clear sound of her laughing across the room puts this bright yellow,
sparkling frame around our house, and the pieces that have been blurry all day
suddenly click into place.
There is too much that I want to say about Adalyn. The funny things she does, the sweet things,
the scary things. Sometimes, I don’t
know where to start. When I compare my thoughts with what everyone has going
on, they seem incredibly insignificant. When I compare them with what else I
have going on, they are huge. I have so much and so little to record all at
once, fragments of thoughts floating around in my brain that, with soft clicks
and turns, fade like a kaleidoscope into a different picture every day. That’s
what our life seems to be made of these days anyway, little pieces that slide
and twirl to fit together into parenthood. Half the time (or more), you don’t
see it yourself; you are deep into the day or night and whatever it demands. When
you do catch a glimpse from a step or two back, it can at times be startling.
We are in a slightly paradoxical world in which everything
is the same routine and yet everything is changing. Feedings; diapers; naptime;
reading Pookie before bed: this is our world. Rinse and repeat every day. Yet, changes
evolve into our reality constantly. Movements, eating, talking, the tricks[1]. I remember when Adalyn was a mere martian of
a newborn, she’d yawn and stretch and look at the window. We video-taped this. Several times, in fact. Cooing, clapping and cheering on our
brilliant child for, you know, blinking.
Last week, she took toys out of her basket, and put them back in. Then
she flung them out. Then she put them back in, with great gusto and vigor. I was watching her do this for about 20
minutes, no less in awe than I was when she got the hiccups as a newborn.
Many of these changes include her turning into a typical hilarious
hellion of a kid. This is when one is
less in awe, because one is busy chasing the small human around, or walking
with her attached to one’s foot, like a sea urchin. For example, when she’s down on the floor, she
wants to be picked up. When she’s up, she’s squirming to get down. She’s
learned to throw what I suppose must be tantrums, during which she flops herself
flat on the floor, thudding her head against the alarmingly hard surface crying,
until she sees something shiny. These are thus far hilarious.[2]
She has gotten her leg stuck in the crib slats 4 times this week trying to
climb out. She unrolled an entire roll of paper towels yesterday while I peeled
a pear. She ate a bug 15 minutes later; I gagged while I fished it out,
wondering why in the world we are allowed to raise a child. She has taken to scrubbing her hair with
sweet potatoes and then leaning down to let Wallie lick her hands from the high
chair, whose manners are clearly only going to get better and better.
She can scale a couch like Spiderman, and has learned to
walk backwards down the stairs, thanks to Pops.
However, she thinks this strategy works for any height, including high
beds and large cliffs, thus we are looking into a climbing belt with baby belay
devices. She also has ignored her first football game that included the
Redskins sucking[3]. Fortunately,
she’ll become acquainted with Rodgers and the discount double check soon. She
wakes up from her naps laughing and waving exuberantly at every item near her,
as if to say HELLO, I’M AWAKE AGAIN! She can throw a ball on request, although
she is shocked and delighted every time she does. She laughs at the dog leash,
the new toy Jean got her, Chris’s Donald duck voice, cabinets she can open, and
every person she sees. She is, as Al
Green so aptly puts it, love n’ happiness.
These pieces move and shift and rotate so often; our days
are like a game of freeze tag, running around like the crazy people we are, until
every once and a while –like right before a nap when she sighs on my shoulder
or while I’m reading her a book, or when she is concentrating on picking up a
blade of grass— life scoots up behind us and says Tag!…and it all freezes for a second. It all comes into focus. As
Adalyn sat with her dad in the rocker, running out of breath to laugh, I saw
her hand reaching up to turn Sheaff’s face, and I felt it. Such happiness radiating
from the pair in that rocker, that for an instant, time became still enough
that I could stop and see what our world looks like. Tag, Sparkle! I thought. You’re
it.
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