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2011-08-12

My earliest memory/ Lucy update

I want to tell you about my earliest memory. How old I was is a mystery to me. Even my mom probably won't remember this one, but it was her voice that made the memory stick.

I was a baby. Or baby-sized. You know, in that range. Maybe I was in a bed, maybe it was a crib. I want to say it was a crib. I was laying down, and probably fussing a lot. I say this because what I remember most, the most clear part of the memory, is my mom singing, "Hush little baby, don't say a word, mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird." You know the song.

It immediately made me relax and stop crying. I remember being surprised at how calm it made me, how comforted. Mom must have seen my eyes start to close, cause she walked out of the room in a hurry, probably cause there are a trillion things to do that don't involve child care when you're caring for a child. I remember thinking that mom walking out of the room should, by all reasoning, make me cry more, but I was too tired and too relaxed by her singing. I fell to sleep.

Thus ends my earliest memory.

Now I want to tell you about Lucy. She's two years and five months and one day old today. She is learning all kinds of stuff. Speaking in sentences, general comprehension of the words mama and I use to speak to her, even if she doesn't know what all the words mean, learning how to clothe and unclothe herself, how to eat cleanly, and most importantly, how to express her thoughts, are the big ones she's working on now. And it's amazing to watch.

Whining takes the place of most negative thought expression. Anger and frustration fill her much of the time. Mama and I expect her to behave like a little lady, even though she doesn't understand all the rules yet. But she's coming along nicely, and we're trying to be as nice to her as she needs us to be. Not more so; we're not gonna turn her into some mooshy marshmallow. But she knows we love and respect and support her. Every time we tell her no, or that's naughty, or whatever, whenever we express a negative reaction to something she does, we always try to explain clearly what it is that she did that was so naughty. And then we give her love and hugs and nice words. For every "don't do that," there's a "good job" waiting around the corner.

There are a trillion more things I could say about her, and I could edit this piece further, but it's time to take her to the park. Mama's first day off from her first week back at work is today, and she's taking care of BB and I guess I've got Lucy all day. But one more thing--

I'm always surprised at how she glows when she smiles. It takes over her whole face, and all her little baby teeth show, and it fills me with an inner peace. She's so jolly. I attribute that to myself for always playing with her and throwing her around and making her fly high in the sky and freaking out mama and reading her books and paying so much attention to her. She's like, my whole life, man. But now BB has come into play and I'm learning to share Lucy with her, and she's learning to share me.

Enough. Park time.


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