December 6, 2007: Fourteen Months Old

When are you no longer a baby? And what, exactly, comes next? You are trying to skip some steps, I think. Jumping right past toddler, past little boy and child to Mr. Independent. To Guy in Charge.

Your determination to be at the controls is most evident when you are at work re-arranging your world. You are not content to be in the stroller or wagon. You have to be outside, pushing it where you want it to go. And no one else’s hands are allowed to hover anywhere near you or the object of your interest while you are in the pilot’s seat. Steering down a hill or into a wall, I attempt to reach out to keep you from falling on your face. If you notice my touch, you stop, emit an ear-splitting shriek, and shove my hands away. Your radar stays on throughout each journey as you glance around every so often to make sure no one is attempting to sneak a guiding hand into your zone of control.

All this applies only as long as you do not need a little brawn or extra coordination to get you out of a pickle. When you do, boy, someone better be right there and ready. We taught you the sign for help, and you picked it up in an instant. When your music table or dining room chair is snagged on the threshold and you need a boost to get it over onto the carpet to finish your lap around the room, you shove and shove until you realize you aren’t quite the King Kong you think yourself to be. Then you stand and grab your fist, wave your hands repeatedly until someone comes to your aid. But once you are off and running again, everyone had better move it! You’ve run over the cat’s tail, the dog’s paws, my toes, and your daddy’s outstretched shins.

You are not only intent on driving, but on navigating and determining the route. You have been practicing your independent steps, making your toddly way across the living room a few times a day. But you are still much happier to hold onto your daddy’s or my hands when you are walking. It is a sweet picture, certainly, to see you wobbling down the gravel driveway, clinging to our outstretched fingers. But this is no intimate exchange between parent and child. You grip our pointers like reigns, steering decisively in the direction you want to go. If I say it’s time to head back home and you want to go scale the rock wall, you will twist my fingers back on themselves to get me to turn in the direction on which you have set your steely sights.

When I let you steer me, I understand that your world has exploded in exploratory possibility since you have evolved to upright. It is as if your horizon has receded in that single instant, and an extraordinary, endless landscape has exploded into view. You notice every possible climbing surface within a hundred yards – a fence, an old trailer, porch steps, car tires. You want to investigate piles of rotting firewood, an icy creek-bed, the entire range of keys on the piano, the sound of your skull reverberating against plate glass. Your interests are unexpected and occasionally bizarre, but I have to remember that every encounter with a new texture – even the feel of upholstery against your teeth or the cat’s tongue against your fingertip – plants a seed for giving your world shape and meaning.

Somewhere in the last few weeks, you have made the discovery that asking gets you where you want to go a lot faster than almost any other method at your disposal. You have picked up a dozen baby signs in just a couple of weeks, using your new vocabulary with delighted vigor. When you are hungry or want to nurse, you let me know and – wonder of wonders – I meet your request. When you are finished eating or hear Fenway barking, when a froggie appears on the pages of your book or a fly lands on the window, and when you are ready to jump into the bath or fall into bed, you let us know and your face breaks into a grin when we understand. You sign “please” when you want something you see, and if we are not looking or fail to understand your request, you follow it up with your signature hair-raising peal. More and more, you know how to indicate your desires, and we are experiencing a blessed waning of the screech.

What astounds me is how quickly you comprehend, learn, and then apply each new piece of information you encounter. Just this morning, I asked if you wanted to go outside. I did the sign, and in an instant you repeated it then used it as we made our way out the door. Your vocabulary expands almost daily. We can almost see the webs of understanding being woven inside your brain, the language taking shape, the foundation of the conversations we will someday have with you taking shape, block by block.

November 30, 2007: Sweet Home

A week in Gig Harbor with the grandparents, a week back in Colorado with Jaimin and Aiden keeping us company, a week in Dallas with more family than should ever be permitted in one town, then two days on the road hauling a trailer from Oklahoma with a rickety old piano and its veiled threat of lessons someday in not-so-distant future. . .

Eliot has communicated his feelings about all this activity by harboring a low-grade stomach bug which has kept us sequestered at camp for the better part of the week. Of course, it will be a short-lived hiatus. Bill swoops in on Sunday, and one of the many grand contributions of his supreme Grandpa-ness is to give these tired parents a full 24 hour break, including an overnight stay at the local Hampton Inn. This will be my first night away from Eliot since his conception back in January of 2006. Think I'll be fretting about the baby? After two years with him in me, on me, around me for nearly two uninterrupted years? Hah. Think again.

Put the pedal to the medal, Granny!

Three generations of women and one stunned bug.

Cousin Dylan and Gramma Genie show the newbie how it's done.

There just isn't enough daddy to go around.

Hey, who's really in charge here?

November 11, 2007: Thirteen Months Old

When I was in middle school, our English teacher had us memorize the full list of prepositions. In alphabetical order. Aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around. . . At one point in my adolescent life, I knew every possible verbal way to relate objects to one another in space and time. I undertook the rather grueling exercise with the grim assurance that I would have about as much use for that skill as I would memorizing the quadratic equation.

Oh, how wrong I have been.

Eliot, now that you have crossed over the one-year mark, I have never needed such an array of prepositions. No longer are you just in the kitchen. You are in the kitchen, under the cabinet within the cupboard on the top shelf among the cereal boxes with your hand deep inside a bag of Rice Chex. When I leave the room for a moment to throw laundry in the dryer or brush my teeth, I no longer have any clear sense where you will be when I return. I usually come back to find a big blank space wherever I left you, and more often than not, a cursory scan of the room offers no clue as to your whereabouts. I have found you underneath the coffee table attempting to pry the outlet covers loose. I have discovered you wedged behind the sofa on top of the windowsill gleefully banging your head against the glass. Most recently, I tracked you down in the bathroom, leaning against the toilet, reaching deep into the bowl for some buried treasure (a toilet lock appeared the following day).

The range of my prepositional vocabulary expands with each new skill you acquire to thwart my attempts to corral your exploration. You drag the stool along the floor, climb up and reach far into the middle of the counters for stray graham crackers or water glasses. You reach up on tip-toes and balance on the cross-bar in a valiant attempt to scale over the top of the baby gate. You pull the knife drawer out as far as the safety lock will allow, weave your hand between and under the edge, and fish around for some forbidden object. You have moved from in, around, and under, to atop, over, inside. To past. To beyond.

As I write this, we are visiting your Gramma Lolly and Grandpa Michael in Washington. Your Gramma went to great efforts to baby-proof the house and fill it with developmentally appropriate toys and books, and she put them all around every room, right at your level. You have spent a few minutes with the blocks and trains, knocking down what we build up or emptying out buckets we fill. But I have discovered that you see yourself as the subject in need of a constant shifting preposition. You are unsatisfied with moving blocks into and out of the bucket. If you are next to the bucket, you are the one who has to move. Away from the bucket, onto the couch, under the bench, up on the wall, behind the dining table. You have to re-orient yourself constantly in relation to the room and the objects in it, including us. When your grandpa comes home from his busy day working at the Tacoma Y, you crawl up to him, ecstatic at your new playmate. But it is not satisfactory for him to sit and invite you on his lap. No, you need to climb over the arm of the chair, behind his newspaper, between him and the wall. And then you need him to come down onto the floor so you can pull up on his back, crawl underneath his knees, stick your finger inside his nose.

You are the subject, the main actor in your existence. Your will is bigger than even your body, reaching past your capabilities. You dance without being able to walk, demand without being able to talk. When your daddy has to return to work after lunch, you cry and wave bye-bye, bye-bye, even long after he is gone, until you are mollified by this simple, manageable, repeatable act. You cannot make him stay, but you can, at least, soften the transition by being in charge of the goodbye.

Sometimes your desire to communicate your wishes is so intense, so frenzied and without structure, that you point in every direction at once while screeching, until you land on the one object in the room you know we can decipher. “Aht, aht, aht!” While gesturing to the overhead lamp, and waiting the joyful moment when we say, “Yes, that’s the light, Eliot.” As if that recognition, that moment of connection with us, is an acceptable substitute for the whole world. As if, by practicing your ability to move toward and withdraw from each object, each connection, you claim one single, unmoving position: that of the author of your story.