Minky & Me

Minky likes my violet perfume. A couple of months ago, I started asking her if she wanted to smell it once I put it on. She’d nuzzle my neck making loud sniffing noises. Then I would pretend to spray it on her and she’d sniff her arm.

Now the perfume bottle has become somewhat beloved. This morning, after climbing up on a pillow to get it off of my dresser, Minky insisted on walking down the stairs holding it under her arm. Several times I tried to take it so she could hold on. She pushed me away in an exasperated manner. Halfway down, she took off the cap but was really vexed that she then didn’t have a free hand to hold onto the wall. It stopped her for a full minute, which can seem like ten hours to a waiting mother.

The night before Minky was born my sister wrote her a letter. My sister is a talented writer. In the letter she mentions having loved watching me get ready to go out in the evenings. I am five years older so when I started high school my sister would have been ten. Until I read that I had no recollection of her sitting with me in the bathroom much less that she remembered it so fondly.

The violet perfume I have now reminds me of a bottle that my parents brought back for me from England when I was ten. It was their only trip abroad together. The bottle was dimpled and had a hand painted violet on it. How can it be that I can still see it so clearly after all these years? Of course the fact that my parents had chosen it for me made it all the more coveted.

These things make me wonder about Minky. What will she remember from childhood? Will she have a fondness for perfume? Will there be, somewhere in her being, not quite well formed enough to be a memory, a glimmer of the two of us standing in my bedroom on a warm summer’s day, sniffing perfume?

A precocious girl, our Minky. Always investigating. Always pointing things out to Mum and Dad. She likes to climb. She likes to brush her teeth. She likes to eat every single thing Mum is eating even when the food on her plate is identical.

Tantrums are becoming commonplace, like a clock chiming the quarter hour. When Minky is gripped by one she throws herself crying onto the floor. I walk away without saying a word, as recommended by Love and Logic. My suspicion is that the poor baby can’t articulate her wants as well as she’d like and that causes frustration. Of course a lot of of what she’d like to do is get into the cupboard with all the cleaning solvents or climb onto the sill of an open window.

Somehow in the last month, though, I’ve started accepting the highs and lows of the day with a toddler. I’m not always successful at being patient but I’m not too bad. Even in the most tricky moments I can appreciate how wonderful our little girl is.

Tonight we said goodbye to Uncle Joe. He left for England. Joe is our friend and co-houser, as we like to call it, who is working these days in Jolly Old. We bought a two family together almost four years ago now. Joe and I share a love of celebrity gossip. He has generously lugged truck loads full of Hello magazines back from England for me for half a year now. I will miss him while he is away. (Good God, while copying the Hello link I noticed an Upclose and Personal bit about Princess Stephanie. Has she again taken up with an unsuitable younger man?)

This story is so me.

I went the other day to check out a family day care. While chatting with the owner a very distasteful odor wafted by several times. It was highly unpleasant. I left the meeting feeling disappointed. Not only was the living room a bit dirty but also there were no tables for art or even books for that matter. The smell was the icing on the cake.

When I arrived at our second destination that morning, a sing-a-long, I reached into my bike bag to take out Minky’s snack. I had done this at the daycare too. Suddenly an identical smell to the one at the day care rose up from the recesses of my bag and walloped me.

It was then that, had I been in a television show, a flashback would have occurred. In the flashback the audience would have seen me fishing out an old diaper wrapped in a plastic bag from my bag that very morning. I would have looked at the diaper in a perplexed manner and then, not remembering how long ago I had put it in, I would have shrugged and tossed it in the garbage.

Two phrases, “check it out” and “I love you” needed to be captured on film. Well, not actually film in this case – our digital camera. Yesterday I got Minky to say both. Click here to go to the Movies section and check it out.

In two weeks I begin a class toward a Master’s degree in teaching. I am slightly afraid. I decided to do this a couple of months ago. I have thought about teaching on and off for some time. I can imagine myself in front of a room full of bright faces tackling some subject matter. I just hope my maybe somewhat idealized image of teaching isn’t too far from reality.

Unlike design, which I think of as a youth oriented career, teaching and gray hair go hand in hand. There is some sense in these crazy times in thinking about what vocation will allow you to work into old age. If I’ve done nothing else in my professional life, I’ve carefully considered how to stay marketable.

Beside that rather large undertaking we’re planning to move. Though we’ll miss Joe terribly, a house of our own with a bigger yard for Minky the Intrepid will be wonderful. I have been slogging through boxes and shelves of books this last week in preparation. I swore I’d never move after last time, having trudged so many times up and down four flights of stairs that my leg muscles wobbled for days afterward.

Minky in the last weeks has become a language master. She says all the words we say to her and is now stringing two and three words together to make sentences. Tonight she told me repeatedly boo boo, ouch and kitch (which means kiss). It is very impressive. Yesterday she exclaimed, “check it out” several times after I suggested we check out the sand box at the playground. I love this talking thing.

One night last week, a little before one in the morning, I, daddy, was sleeping peacefully when a thunderclap exploded outside our window so intensely that Susan and I sprang instantly, simultaneously, to a sitting position. After checking to make sure we were still alive, we rushed into Coco’s room to see how she was taking the storm. Somehow the thunder had not awakened her, but the sound of us coming into the room did. I carried her into the bedroom and sat on the edge of our bed with her on my lap facing me, head against my chest and arms gently holding on as she stared at the incredible show. The storm continued, pounding rain and wind punctuated by the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard. It sounded as if the clouds were mere feet above our house, with giant thunder claps beginning at the side of the house and rolling across to the front windows. Susan was scared, Rocky was terrified, I was more than a little nervous, but Coco remained calm. She felt safe in my arms and didn’t make the slightest move to get away or even wiggle for the twenty plus minutes the storm lasted. She hasn’t sat still for twenty minutes for about a year. Occasionally she would meekly say, “boom” after a particularly loud clap. It was the sort of love and trust you get from a child with a high fever – like they’re finally able to sit still and accept the endless love you’re dying to give them. As the storm moved into the distance and I carried Coco to her room, she looked out the window and said “bye bye ‘torm.”

This won’t really be her first memory I suppose, but it was big enough, unusual enough, and emotional enough that just maybe it will be. Coco is precocious.

PS. After the storm, I actually walked barefoot around the exterior of our house to make sure neither the house nor the trees around it were on fire. We were OK, but about six houses away, a fire truck and police cruiser were visiting a house had been far, far less lucky.

One morning this week I was changing Minky. I leaned in close and asked her if she’d like to go swimming. She threw her arms around my neck, hugged me and said, “lubby loo do,” which translates as “I love you too.”

That is now in first place among my most cherished moments of motherhood.

The baby book we have has a page for all the firsts: first car ride, first bath. I’ve done a horrible job of keeping track of the dates of Minky’s first tandem ride and first ice cream so this section of the book is blank. But here I’ve photographed “First Corn.” We had it for dinner tonight. Daddy is away visiting a friend and missed it but will get to see the picture.

Hariet and Lucca came over this evening to visit. It’s nice to have friends right across the street. The dress Minky is wearing fit well when I bought it a few months ago. It looks scandalously short now owing to the fact that she’s grown incredibly over the last couple months.

Tomorrow we head to my mother’s house for a week at the beach. Minky & Me will be on hiatus.

This morning I opened the door to Minky’s room and saw her lying on her back staring up at her Fisher Price aquarium, listening to the music it plays. She was hugging Willard tightly.

When she heard the door open her legs bounced into the air as though she was startled. Then she rolled over, and sprung unsteadily up. She grabbed onto the crib railing, pointed to the floor and shouted, “book!”

Then she plopped down and said, “boo boo,” and pointed to her scraped knee. She leaned down and kissed it.

Tonight when Larry was going to take her up to bed, we sang Happy Birthday to her since today she is eighteen months old – wow – and at the end she said, “appy do do.”