01.09.10
Dear Ashden: Month Twenty-Eight
Dear Ash,
You’re 28 months old today! Outside of Christmas, it’s been a pretty uneventful month, with us hunkering down and trying to make it through these cold days.
This month we made our very first snowman together, which you named “Frosty,” of course. You got a kick out of him, especially watching him melt in the warmer days following the snowstorm.
Christmas this year was fun and I spoiled you. Lots of cars and trucks, some knitted play food (a sandwich, a cookie, a strawberry- inspired by the fact that you’d bring me car tires piled high and tell me that it was a sandwich), a puzzle and your biggest present was a wooden parking garage. You were very excited to see it, and you’ve hooked it up to your train tracks and play with it as often as you can.
After our own little Christmas here at our house we went to my mother’s house, your Nana’s, with the rest of the family. Ambera and Oliver, Jarrod and Ellie (who are expecting their first baby this spring), and Nana and Dee. We opened more presents and ate dinner and played with toys.
This was the first Christmas I’ve been really excited for in years and years, and I know it’s just going to keep getting better. I love seeing the world from your eyes.
I had a week-long vacation between Christmas and New Years, so you and I got to spend a lot of quality time together. It was lovely. One of those days was really warm, so we packed everyone up and went to Peggy’s Cove. You really loved the lighthouse and waves (this was your second or third time there), and your dad was helping you “jump” over all the big rocks. You laughed the whole time.
This month you started the “watch me, mama!” phase as you do something random and make me watch you intently. I remember it well from my own childhood, but definitely not this early. I used to make my mom rate my dives into the water from 1-10 and cartwheels and whatever else. You don’t need anything like that (yet), but you enjoy my attention. You tend to be much more self-sufficient while you’re alone with your dad- he can leave you alone in your room while you play with cars and he surfs the internet or naps on the couch. When you’re with me, it’s all me, all the time. If I try to check my email, you drive your cars on my keyboard or directly in front of me, if not ON me.
You know a zillion songs. School taught you all a ton of carols, and you love Wheels on the Bus, Five Little Ducks, Do You Know the Muffin Man, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, the list goes on. Every single common song out there that’s meant for kids your age, you know it off by heart. You’ve also started singing, not just reciting.
In our basement is where you and your dad hang out in the mornings, and there’s a tricycle, wagon, bicycle with training wheels, your ride-on lawnmower that you got for Christmas from Nana and Dee and your beloved plasma car you got for your birthday. You’ve mastered it, and like pushing it with your feet more than how it was designed to work, and you’ve gotten fantastic at what you and your dad call the “power slide.” Your dad now makes you wear your helmet, which was this crazy ugly plastic and Styrofoam thing, until your dad spray painted it black and stenciled your name on it.
You also like to pretend to have fallen off your plasma car. Your father is very obviously concerned bout your well being.
We had a big snowstorm this month, and you really liked “helping” shovel, and so your dad bought you your very own little shovel, but here you are with a big one when you and I went out together.
One of my favorite things about you getting older is your ability to express yourself so that I get to learn more and more about who you are and how you feel. Your emotions are out there for everyone to see, right on the surface, ready to boil over, regardless of whether it’s tears or laughter.
My very favorite part of the day is when you come home from school in your father’s arms, and he sets you down on the kitchen floor, where I’m waiting, kneeling down with my arms outstretched, and you run into them with a huge smile and collapse into me with the weight of your entire body and a huge smile on your face, and I cover you with as many kisses as you’ll let me give you. I had no idea how much that moment meant to you as well until one day when I was on the telephone when you came home, and we missed our reuniting hug and then you wouldn’t speak to me or look at me for far too long. I promise to never miss another hug the instant you walk into the house after a long day of being away from me. You need it as much as I do.
I love you.
Love,
Mama