I want to write all the time, there are so many things I want to write. But then I forget. Or I get swept up. I wanted this to be better.
I had a rough time with you, but now when I think back it’s been at least a couple of months since I felt that way. Sometimes I still lose my patience. I very rarely yell at you because I lose patience, though. I just curse under my breath. It is very impassioned cursing. you wear me right through, most days at least once.
Now you are solidly three and a half. Closer to four than three. You are slimming down. your face, your legs, your whole body is slimming, and you look more and more like a Boy. More and more you want to be a baby, you act like a baby, talk like a baby. It kind of drives me crazy, but it also is sort of bittersweet. you are clinging, just as I am. You are reacting to your brother, actually, mimicking him in an almost creepily accurate way. Acting on a jealousy. Liam acts on his jealousy by mimicking you, as well. Monkey see.
I’m sitting here listening to hipster music, thinking about my dad, and wondering how the mistakes I’ve made will manifest themselves in your longings and hangups, when you are an adult.
You recently fell, twice. Once at your Aunt Amanda’s wedding – falling right on your teeth, causing trauma that may cause you to lose one early. And then a few days later, falling backwards in your chair to hit your head against a wall. you didn’t cry too long, you certainly didn’t get knocked out – but since then, your eyes are crossing. I worry.
we had strangers over to the house the other day, and you ran right up to them and gave them all hugs, sat in their laps. You were not remotely shy. You like to sing the songs you learn at school. You love Bunch Lunch (Lunch bunch!) on the days you go, love to carry your lunchbox. Whenever you come home, you are filled with stories, tattling on your friends. Jacques pushed me. Josie Mae pushed me. Miles took my bike. You never tell happy stories about getting along with friends.
You still love to sit with us, so close we’re touching. You ask for things in a long stream of requests – Can I have juice and fruit bar and peanut butter crackers and peanut butter sammich and watch Backyardigans and Casper the Ghost and Kung Fu Panda?