melted smoosh

' dearest sweetpea, you are such a little person now! walking and talking are the only things holding you back from full toddlerhood, and it's amazing (and a little bit terrifying) to watch how quickly you're developing beyond the tabula rasa of babyhood. you're now crawling all over the house, pulling up to your knees, cruising along the furniture if we help you stand up, and somehow, consistently intrigued by the most dangerous or messy things you can find (Kaiser's water dish, the grate under the refrigerator, cupboard doors and the contents therein). you're still rocking the two-tooth grin, but your mealtimes are beginning to follow a more grown-up routine. you drink a 5 oz bottle as soon as you wake up, followed by a breakfast of pureed fruit or oatmeal, then an hour later or so you'll feed yourself scrambled eggs or more fruit. you get another bottle around 10 or 11 am, then blended veggies, our leftovers, or a jar of a Gerber meat dinner.

i want to remember always the weight of your head in my palm, the trusting fullness of your tummy tucked in the crook of my arm; your little murmurs of satisfaction and your butterfly hands flittering up to my shoulder, then weightlessly floating back down, your exquisite earlobe moving back and forth with every swallow. i want to remember always the way your chest rises and falls like a little bird and how, when you fall asleep, you turn your head and purse your perfect lips and stop breathing for an endless moment and then sigh, and i curl you up to me, cradling all of you, all you are now and all you are going to be, and then softly lay you down in your little bed. you stretch into a snow angel. 

it's a quarter past ten on Monday morning, and instead of reviewing lab results, palpating an abdomen, filling out medical necessity forms for diabetic supplies, or anesthetizing an abscess before performing an I&D, i'm home. greta just finished an entire trayful of scrambled egg bits and i took her upstairs to read Guess How Much I Love You  (a baby shower gift from Jon's mom!), laid her in her crib in her t-shirt and FuzziBunz diaper, and tiptoed out of the room with her laundry basket. but instead of throwing her clothes in the wash, i'm writing. the breeze is barely rustling the leaves on the big tree by the garage and a mourning dove is cooing, a sound that always makes me think of Camano. bertram is perched on the counter like a little orange owl, blinking slowly at the quiet kitchen. kaiser has squashed himself into the corner between the back door and the closet so he can take a snooze, assured that no intruders can sneak up behind him. and a few halfheart