Twenty Months and More

Time marches on and my little girl is closer to two than to her first birthday.

This month has been noticeable for her discovery of singing. Suddenly she can sing. Sort of. She still misses more words than she hits but she's wildly enthusiastic about any sort of music. Her most favorite is probably "Ginkle ginkle little 'car." Pretty cute. If only she would perform for the camera. I get a couple lines at best.

A couple of days ago she learned to apologize. Only she doesn't apologize to others, only to herself. Or inanimate objects. So she bumped into the glider and fell down, quickly calling out "Sigh!" (Her pronunciation of sorry.) Likewise knocking over her own tower, "Sigh!"

Her curious toddler ways are still in full swing so I finally installed toilet locks -- it was just too much fun for her to toss things into the bowl. I likewise put locks on a drawer in the hall table where I keep little travel packs of tissues because she has a fondness for deliberately removing one tissue at a time from those packets until every tissue is lying on the floor.

A funny second child thing is that she scribbles while she "spells" -- she says "A" and carefully scribbles a bit, then "E" and more scribble. Funny girl!

Calliope seems to be doing great as well. To my amazement, she recently sounded out and wrote her first word. Backwards, to be sure, and entirely lacking in vowels. But still. No one taught her (her school doesn't believe in "training" kids to read before first grade) and she was alone in my office (while I dealt with a terrifying asthma attack, not my own, upstairs) when she composed it.

"Rebecca"

There's also this piece of artwork.

So much to say about this picture! The fact that she's acknowledged that two adults can marry each other. The fact that Amy has a baby in her belly. The fact that Seth has his penis out. For the record, I don't think the penis has anything to do with the baby in her belly, and this is certainly no depiction of a shotgun wedding -- she's oblivious to the idea that someone might not want to be pregnant at the time of her wedding.

Things for me have been a bit challenging of late. Post election blues and then the shocking news of Bethany's death. We have only seen each other a handful of times over the years but we were fitness buddies (virtual) last winter and were in daily contact for months, and we had booked a shared hotel room in Jamaica this winter. My heart aches for Elsie and for her auntie, now mother, and her grandmother. And just the suddenness, and the realization of the frailty of life. Words are inadequate. 

We've also all been sick, twice, and drove to Massachusetts only to sit alone in my brother's house on Thanksgiving Day with a puking, feverish child. Fever took a few days to come down and then was replaced by a scary asthmatic cough that required oral steroids. And then Amelie got it. And then my parked car got hit, and the front fender ripped off. No note was left.

So it's been a lot lately. I feel like maybe, possibly, I'm finally digging myself out of this hole. But I have fear about this post-election world we live in, and what will happen come January. Like mortality, I can't bear to think about it. 

So much more I want to say, and photos I want to post, but this has sat in my inbox far too long. And I need to sleep.