Letter: Month Twenty-Five

Dear E,

This month has been amazing. Your verbal skills have burst into being like some violent tropical flower that blooms overnight. You’ve become quite the little parrot and love trying out new words and phrases. When you hear a sound in the distance like the trains that run near our house you’ll cup your hand around an ear and shout, “Listen!…train!”

Your improved verbal skills have opened up a whole new world of embarrassing social situations. You never saw our little mouse visitor but listening to your dad and I talk about it along with watching an episode of Wonder Pets that featured a mouse has cemented mice as one of your favorite topics of conversation. “Mouse!” is one of the first things you say when I get you up. At first it freaked me out because I thought that you had seen a mouse in your room but no, you just like talking about them. In fact when we were at the neighborhood Christmas party you struck up a conversation about mice with one of our neighbors, apropos of nothing. We then had to explain about our little Thanksgiving adventure. So, um, thanks for that! I have a feeling it won’t be the last time your mouth gets us in an embarrassing situation.

Take for instance your sometimes spotty enunciation. You like pointing out trucks as we drive down the freeway but you have some predictable (but pretty funny) problems saying “truck.” I try not to laugh but sometimes it’s pretty hard.

You’re really interested in lights and the dark. Almost every time we turn off a light you exclaim, “Oh, no! It’s dark!” and then mumble some additional unintelligible commentary. Since you’re still enamored with the moon I bought you a yellow crescent shaped lamp and every night we read books by its light and then afterward you flip the switch and turn it off. Sometimes you like to stall and complain about turning it off but if I just hold you close and talk to you about how it’s time to go to bed you always turn it off yourself. It’s very sweet.

I know that parental navel-gazing is pretty annoying so I try not to bore other adults by recapping the latest cute/funny thing you did. But sometimes after you’ve gone to sleep your dad and I will talk about the day and indulge ourselves by discussing the cute and funny things you did that day. In the middle of such moments I feel the love of our little family wrap around me and I marvel at our blessings.

Love,

Mama