Dear Kelly,

I suppose I should be throwing you a party for your half-year birthday, but I’m more of an annual celebratory kind of Mom. I don’t do Christmas in July sales, and I don’t do too much cha-cha-cha’ing at the 6 month mark. That being said, I fully intend to take you to the Picture People at the Mall, strip you down to your diaper until ALL of your so-crazy-adorable-I-could-scream fat rolls hang out, and spend a king’s ransom on portraits.

Finally, you have something to say this month. Not babbling PER SE, as you still seem to squawk like a pterodactyl, but it’s now timely. I took you out of the bathtub before you were done playing (and by playing I mean sticking the huge yellow water xylophone hammer in your mouth), and you let me know that it was NOT COOL with you. I love it! Tell me more!

We also started vegetables. And by “we”, I mean you. Also, NOT COOL with you. By now, I’m fully enraptured by your every bleep. I can differentiate between your sister’s 200 whines and moans, so the earlier I start cataloguing your complaints, the better off I’ll be. It’s actually quite amusing; You are far too polite to all-out protest the taste, so you quietly eat and every so often give me a facial expression that seems to say, “these are just sub par…and you know it”.

 

As are most things, this vegetable-gagging thing you do (it’s a fake gag, and just so cute) is so different from Sara. Sara loves vegetables in a she-gets-this-gene-from-her-Pa Pa Bill sort of way. In a way that when she comes to me at 16 and tells me she’s turning vegan and traveling to an Ashram to meditate, I won’t be surprised. If you see my Dad in the meditation cave, tell him I said Hi! Today I offered her Teddy Grahams, and she told me she’d prefer some Wheat Thins. I am so not lying. You, on the other hand…you just may turn out to be my meat and potatoes daughter. I am a meat and potatoes kind of cook, so I look forward to your company.

For the most part, we just spend our days praying. That’s playing, using Sara’s accent. We pray with our toys, upstairs and down. I love it that you love toys. Toys of all kinds fascinate and thrill you. Sara prefers household objects to toys, making the “buying my way out of parenting” much more difficult. Do I buy her a doll or a can opener? I never know. I gave you a basket of what-nots the other day, and you pulled out the spatula, and gave me this look that said, “And just what the hell is this? Have I done something wrong? Am I in trouble? ” I had to give you peek-a-blocks immediately. Peek-a-blocks that so overstimulated you sister, she had to resort to empty tupperware containers as solace.

We had our first conversation this week. As I was rocking you to sleep (and by rocking, I mean sitting perfectly still, while you put yourself to sleep…because you’re the BEST SLEEPER ON EARTH AND I LOVE THAT ABOUT YOU), you couldn’t take your eyes off a zipper on my sleeve. You were so intent on studying that zipper, you went cross-eyed. I started to giggle. You looked at me with shock, and registered that it was you that made me giggle. You crossed your eyes again, and then quickly looked at me and smiled. At that point, I laughed with my whole body. So you laughed right back, with your cherry red cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk. And that my dear, was our first conversation. Perhaps to some, it’s far too abstract a story to be equated with communication. But I finish with a phrase you will hear many times from me: Mommy knows, Mommy knows.

Your Squawk/Giggle/Fat-Leg Wiggle Translator,

Mommy