Levedy

12 Months

Dear Bean-

You turned a year old this weekend. I had always intended to act like a hippy and write down my “birth story” and force it on unsuspecting people eating their lunches in peace, but I never got around to it. You see, I was much too busy staring at you. I didn’t realize that staring can take up so much of one’s life.

You came into the world sunny-side up, that is, facing the ceiling instead of the floor. I should have guessed that you have your own way of doing things, and damn the textbooks in the process. The nurse told me that your orientation was such that if I couldn’t push you out (and fast), that they would have to consider surgery to HACK YOU OUT OF ME. That’s all the two of us needed to hear (although you probably only heard “mmph mmch mmmph HACK YOU OUT”). Twenty minutes of pushing on my part and twenty minutes of, I don’t know, squirming? on your part and you were topside. We surprised them all, little Bean. The doctor didn’t have time to get to the hospital. The nurse delivered you, safe and sound, with only a few tears (racing skidmarks, the nurse called them) to show your hasty descent.

You came out looking like Wilford Brimley after a sauna. Even though you are a year old, I still can’t figure out who you look like. You have my coloring, and your father’s blue eyes, but the rest is all you: your little chuckle in the morning when I come to get you out of your crib, your shifty-eyed-dog look when you’re about to touch a button you’re not supposed to, and the wide-eyed “Golly, you meant no? Don’t touch? Ooh, sorry. Thought you meant the opposite” fake-ass alibi looks are all your own.

You are a ray of sunshine, a beautiful butterfly, and a tricksey little minx. You love playing in the mud and wrestling with your cousin. You derive equal joy from playing in the sunshine and cuddling with me in the dark of the morning. When I was sixteen, I didn’t think that I wanted to have kids. You’ll be sixteen and convinced of your own superiority, too. But I got over it, and I’m glad. Now I have you, and I wouldn’t trade the best, carefree, teenaged-with-no-responsibilities day for the worst, covered-in-every-bodily-fluid while getting-deafened-by-shrieking-at-3-a.m. day for anything. No, really. You’re worth it.

You started walking, and nothing and nobody better get in your way. You’re a whirling dervish, and your constant battle with gravity has only brief cease-fires (some people call them “naps”, but we know better. It’s just strategic regrouping.)You alternate between fierce, don’t-touch-me-I-have-places-to-go-independence and needy, koala-bear, Siamese-twin-like clinginess. You want to bathe all by yourself, but the second that you snort (too much) bubbly bath water, you know to leap out of the bath towards me with arms outstretched like a flying squirrel. You believe that mama can fix everything. I’m handy to keep around that way. You want to do things all by yourself…fourteen inches from me.

One of my dearest memories from this month is you grabbing your farm book and toddling into my lap to read it with me. You love pointing out all of the objects on the page, and I try to tell you the Greek and English words for each of them. You’re fascinated by flowers, both on the printed page and in real life. My tongue is sore from telling you “louloudi” about a skillion times.

In your rare solo moments, you love trotting around upstairs with fists full of artifacts you pull from under my bed. You keep trying to show Ruby your treasures, and are totally mystified when she refuses to be pounded on the back with a dust-bunny-encrusted dryer sheet. If my lap is absent, you will sit down on the floor with a book and point out the flowers to the ghosts around you. I imagine that’s one of the good things that you’ve inherited from those that have come before: your passion for books…and, it must be admitted….talking to yourself.

At your last doctor’s appointment, in addition to your getting five shots that rendered you too sore to walk for two days, we learned that you weigh only 18 pounds, which placed you in the 5th to 10th percentile. I was surprised, because I thought that you were in the 25th to 50th percentile. Looking again, though, I realize that I misread the chart, which is WHY I BECAME AN ENGLISH MAJOR. You are my wee little Bean, and the doctor said that you are perfectly healthy, but small.

Of course, as soon as your female Greek relatives heard of your weight percentile, they (of course) took it upon themselves to call me and tell me to FEED YOU. I mean really, they must think, don’t these white women know that a healthy baby is one that rolls itself across the kitchen floor to get more dolmathes? Since your doctor appointment your female Greek relatives have called daily to see if, in fact, I have remembered to nourish you, and to tell me that I should feed you more lamb, because lamb is the panacea of all creation. That and Listerine.

Your relatives (Greek and otherwise) love you dearly, and have been remarkably resistant to overbearing me with parenting advice. It slips through from time to time, but for the most part, they keep their lips shut when they disagree with my flawed but well-intentioned parenting. After all, I haven’t left you on the roof of the car ONCE. That deserves some credit.

I have such fun bringing you into the backyard and letting you play in the dirt. You love the feel of mud squishing between your toes (okay, fine; and your gums. But who hasn’t been there?) and the warmth of the early summer sun on your naked bum. And yes, you get hosed off before you come into the house. NO KID HAS EVER DIED FROM COLD HOSE WATER, YIA YIA. STOP WORRYING.

You’re incredibly lucky to have relatives who love you fiercely. So fiercely, in fact, that they ignore all logical thinking. But that’s the grandparent’s prerogative, I guess: buy noisy toys that the kid loves but drives the parents nuts, feed the kid all sorts of interesting delicacies but refuse to change the resulting (and equally interesting) diaper, and insist upon the possible perilous ague-inducing toxicity of hose water. All to make sure that you grow up happy and healthy.

You’re very fortunate. And so am I, to have them in my life, too. Besides- the Listerine traps aren’t working.

Love,

Mama

Posted by Jen at April 27, 2007 12:42 PM