Hankey Spankey you are 19 months old and in a phase that can only be called...creative!
It's Christmas and while you freaked out at Santa we got through it. I found this to be hilarious and would gladly pay for therapy later if I could have plopped you down on that lap to hear you scream again! Priceless photo op.
You got so many gifts that you continuously run from each one to another all day till you just fall over tired and I haven't even given them all to you. Our garage still has unopened boxes, not out of disrespect for the giver but out of pure Christmas saturation, that will be opened periodically throughout the winter to maintain a level of sanity to a cooped up toddler.
I try to focus not on the gifts that keep multiplying with each family visit but on the small wonderful things you are doing, saying or seeing for the first time. This is a big time for you and I can see it in your eyes. As you discover your world I am rediscovering my world. I want to show you everything but, as adults do, I have become jaded to what's around me. Sights that have become mundane and tired are seen now as sights of wonder and opportunity. Like looking at the moon. Look outside and wonder at the heavens. Or a fun ball. Bounce a ball and celebrate gravity and inertia. Listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and just try to pretend it's the first time you've heard such genius.
The combinations of what you put on make me laugh a free kind of laugh that I hardly get to practice. You'll have one of my tennis shoes on ( just one), a big yellow hat from Cancun, a tote bag from Toys'R Us and a Kiss T-shirt toddling around the house like you're really going somewhere! Really you are tripping over that too big of a shoe you have on. It's like you are a bag man just gathering up things as you see them and sticking them on your person. Gawd, it's funny!
Hank, you do not have the baggage of life. Every single movement or instinct is pure, unguarded, bright and full of possibility. I'm not a strict parent when it comes to seeing the potential in what you are doing. I don't wipe off your finger smears on the mirrors because you are feeling the smooth surface. I can't clean the windows of your hands that have made designs in the frost because you are finding out about cold. The jelly smears on my shirt are a testament to your curiosity about cleanliness and the lack of it. I let you splash in the bath till I'm practically swimming in the floor. I want you to feel like you can always try something out and we'll clean up the mess later.
The gravity of that last sentence is recognized and I hope we can make that our family motto as there will be times that we need it.
As I type, I see a little blue bird in the tree outside the window with your smears and I see both as a sign of beauty. When you held out your hand to feel the snow and smiled, I smiled with you simply due to the reminder that our world is glorious. Even if I complain about the cold I won't tell you that so you can make up your own mind about it. Some people like it and that's just crazy but people are free to judge for themselves.
As I wrote in my very first letter to you, I think, you are teaching me so much more than you will ever consciencely know. I have the privilege of rediscovery as you become acquainted with what is around you. I get to exercise my parental responsibility and show you, as you are ready, what the world has in store for you and hopefully prepare you for what you have to find out on your own. It's both the most exciting thing I've ever done and by far the more terrifying.
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