He can hold his smaller bottles by himself. The bigger ones still overwhelm his soft, chunky muscles, but it's only a matter of time. If you hand him his pacifier, he stares at it for a long, drawn-out moment before he slowly moves it to his mouth. And, sure, it usually ends up smashed against his nose or in his eye, but he gets the concept. His brain is telling him exactly what to do, all by himself. Soon enough he'll physically catch up with his (GENIUS, BRILLIANT) brain. Thank god, first of all. I'm perpetually stunned my abs aren't rock hard for all the getting off the couch and getting out of bed I do in order to put that pacifier back in his squawking mouth, and, so we're clear, there will definitely be a breath exhaled when he reaches that particular milestone. But, a chest tightening, too. My boy is growing bigger and stronger and more independent every moment. And not just figuratively. He literally wakes up different than when he went down. He can literally do today what he couldn't yesterday. The first year, I'm convinced, is the craziest year of a person's life, when they scale a million metaphorical walls, when they achieve a million little victories, when they are changing always and evermore. It never stops being beautifully and painfully obvious to me that my son will never again be who he was yesterday and that I have no idea who he'll be tomorrow.
Then I read this, and I started CRYING, RIGHT OUT LOUD, like a ridiculous, cliche of a mom:
"From the moment your children come into your life you are losing
them. That the person your child is today is a person you will never
meet again, a person that you will, in some ways, forget, as he or she
is replaced by new people, bigger people, faster people, people with
more words, people with more independence, people whose primary purpose is to move continually away from you."
Yes, that would be it. That would be exactly it.
I jot down notes throughout the month, so I can piece them all together for Kyle's monthly letters. I want to write him not as I vaguely, tiredly remember him to be, but for who he really is. When I look at those notes, I have to stop and think: Did he really used to make that noise, love that book, smile at that song? It's a new song today. It's a new noise. He used to hate being held by our outstretched arms, but now he likes to fly around the room while we sing-song the words "Super Kyle!" I can barely remember all those scream-filled, sleepless nights. Lately, he's up once or twice, and just for a moment. We sleep so much more now, but we're still tired. How were we ever MORE tired than this? How will I ever remember it all?
My monthly letters are so long because, my god, he's so much.
When Kyle was a newborn, and I would scoop him out of his crib in the middle of the night, he would flop against me with no intention. He'd scream and claw, and there was no relief from being in my arms. He was a grouchy little thing, and life royally pissed him off, whether in his crib or with his mom. Now, he enjoys life, he enjoys most everything except when his bottle is emptied or when the car stops, and, now, when I get him out of his crib, he nuzzles into me and hangs on. He knows it's me, and there's relief.
Although I can't imagine I'll ever forget the feeling of his little muscles relaxing into me, the way his jibber-jabbering stops, just momentarily, when he realizes I'm the one who's got him, I have all these words. Even though I'll forget so much, I have so much more because of all I'm keeping a record of, right here. Thank god for this space, for this blog that is too much about my kid and too much about how tired I am and not enough about more interesting things, I know I know I know. Still, thank god I'll never have to fully lose him for what he is right now, today, this instant. Thank god I'll never have to fully mourn the baby that he was and will never be again. Thank god that he'll be this way forever, right here.
I have to lose him in more ways than there are methods to count them. I have to grow strong enough to let him go with each tick of the clock. But, thank god, I get to keep him here forever.