a period of rest

dear monkey puzzle,

i have a picture of you on my cell phone. you are wearing your red baseball hat and green jacket and you look awfully grown up. i look at that picture of you throughout the day when we're apart and i feel connected to you.

daddy finished with his chemo last week. at least, we are pretty sure he is done--when his oncologist comes back from vacation we'll know for sure. daddy has another ct scan scheduled for monday, so next week will tell us a lot about what we might expect over the next few months: more treatment or a period of rest? based on daddy's last scan, we are both expecting another clean scan and a few months off, a period of semi-normalcy. you will be happy when daddy feels well enough every morning to get out of bed early and play with you while i brush my teeth and get dressed for work.

you continue to learn many new words each day. i was keeping a list until it became too difficult to keep up. at last count you had over 75 words. by now you have well over 100, i would guess.

you have also started combining words. you did this once a couple of months ago when i left you at daycare. "bye mommy" you said, and surprised your teachers. but you hadn't done it again until recently, when one morning when daddy did not get up to see you you said, "daddy tired." then you saw the cat sleeping and you said "kitty tired". you've had a number of other combinations since then, with "yellow turtle" being my favorite. you are also repeating multisyllabic words and multi word phrases like crazy. and you seem to understand just about everything i say.

you've also started to have some tantrums, and they're really no fun at all. you're usually so much fun and so easy to be around (active and exhausting, yes, but not difficult) that it's a shock when we're suddenly on opposite sides. most of the tantrums seem to happen when you are tired and you want to do something for yourself that i can't let you do (play with the latch on the safety gate on the stairs, for example). as you seek more independence, we will probably see more of these unwelcome flare-ups. one thing about you is that you are dramatic and expressive, and have been since the day you took your first breath.

i had hoped with these letters to write more often and to paint a clearer picture of your early life. but as daddy gets better, i am getting more and more burned out and i don't have the energy to think very well anymore. i use up my mental energy at work, and at home i do my long list of chores at night and finally collapse into bed.

i do give you lot of love when we're together. and you are very attached to me, so i must be doing a few things right. if i am unable to tell you your story in the detail i had intended, i hope you will understand.

the momentum of love

dear snuggles,

i want you to know that i write you letters in my head all the time. while i'm cooking, cleaning the kitchen, filling your bottles and packing your food for daycare, brushing my teeth. but it's hard to find the time to sit at the computer long enough to get it down for you to read one day.

daddy started chemo yesterday. i went with him, just for the first time to see how it will be for him. we were at the hospital for seven hours in a small, drab room with no windows and an overly chatty woman in the 2nd chemo chair nosing into our business. daddy is doing okay so far with the folfiri. he only had a half dose of the irinotecan this time--the oncologist is starting cautiously and will increase it each time until he finds the limit of daddy's tolerance for the drug.

you are happy as ever. your favorite foods right now are hard boiled egg yolk, sweet potato (chunks of home cooked), banana chunks, and plain yogurt. you love feeding yourself, and now that you have mastered putting food in your mouth, you have started to put other things in your mouth, too. last week you found a small mystery object on the living room floor and popped it in before i could intervene. i stuck my finger in your mouth to get it out, but came out with nothing. you didn't choke, so the identity of the particle you ate will remain one of life's mysteries. today i had to fish two things out of your mouth: soggy paper from a magazine ad (you tore out the page while playing) and some orange peel (daddy gave it to you to hold, but you decided to eat it). so we're at that stage now. i hope we both live through it.

i have been thinking a lot about what kind of mom i want to be for you. what thoughts and behaviors do i want to model for you as you're growing up? what ways of seeing the world could i help you adopt that would be beneficial to you in your life? how can i help you see yourself as a strong person, a helper, a contributor, a speaker of truth, an upstanding human being?

i don't have a word for my religious beliefs. other people might call me an atheist, but that doesn't feel right and i don't use it as a label for myself. agnostic is wrong, too. i can tell you that i don't believe in "personal" god that thinks like we do and plays us like puppets. what i do believe is that the laws of nature are the ultimate truth. physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, compassion, empathy, love. i am telling you this because it occurred to me this week as i was standing at the stove that the idea of god that so many people have, a god that listens to and answers the prayers of human beings, though farfetched in my opinion, is no more farfetched than the idea of you being born from nothing but will, biology, and luck. no more farfetched than the experiential arc of a single human life, the bewilderment of existence, the purposelessness of it, the joy of it, the suffering that sits on the sidelines for some and for others dominates the game from the very beginning.

i still don't believe in a personal god.

i do believe in getting up every day and doing the best i can.

i believe in the thrill of small beauty.

in the growth potential of hardship.

and most of all, in the momentum of love.

friendly faces

dear little muffin,

yesterday morning when i dropped you at daycare, you saw a little girl getting out of another car and you waved at her and very brightly said "hi!". that's something i really like about you: you have always been a friendly guy.

today, i stopped at the grocery store on my way to pick you up and felt myself surrounded by friendly faces. everywhere i looked i saw people who looked like potential friends--kind, fun, and funny souls. i don't feel like that very often, but when i do it's a great feeling, like the world is an open, safe place, rich and welcoming. i hope you will see the world that way as you get older. good things just waiting to happen.

you are changing constantly, transforming right before my eyes.

you now have the beginnings of two teeth. one is about half arrived, and it's neighbor has shown up fashionably late and is just sticking it's foot through the door.

you can stand by yourself now, entirely unsupported, for a surprising number of seconds before you teeter and drop onto your cushiony bottom. but only when you feel like it; never on demand.

you are very chatty. you have mastered mama, dada, nana, baba, and are now working on your g's. gaga and goo goo, etc. you can say ball ("ba"), you try to say diaper ("di"), and one day even tried to repeat after me when i said tylenol ("ty-o"). you say kitty ("ditty"). you say hi. you say yeah. and i'm pretty sure you've started shaking your head no and nodding yes, and that those motions in response to questions are not just coincidence.

you continue to be a wet and sloppy kisser, and when you kiss (sweetly suck/slobber on) my chin (always giggling) you seem to enjoy exercising your new teeth.

so much has happened since i last wrote. it's too much to begin to tell.

yesterday daddy had a liter of fluid drained from around his right lung. he seems to feel better now that he has more breathing room. he said the fluid looked like iced tea, and i'm glad i no longer drink iced tea or i'd probably just have had that pleasure permanently spoiled. we are waiting for the lab report now to find out if the fluid shows signs of infection or cancer.

it has been a long and difficult month for daddy and me. daddy rests when he's tired, but i've discovered a new kind of fatigue, a kind of tiredness that sees no end in sight. the words "no rest for the weary" often come to mind as i go about my days.

even still, i feel a remarkable amount of friendliness in the world much of the time. it leaves me hopeful. and i hope that hopefulness is something i can impart to you. or better, i hope your hopefulness comes from within, like a bubbling spring, requiring no effort from you, for all of your days.

turning corners

dear snooky,

well, daddy didn't have his surgery. it got rescheduled for october 4 because the cancer is growing again and the doctors decided to do a bigger operation. they are going to take out the whole right side of his liver and a little bit of the left side, too. daddy will be in the hospital for at least a week, and it will take about two months before he feels like himself again. after daddy has recovered, he will start chemo again for six months. so we have some hard times ahead.

i wish i could say that daddy and i have been spending a lot of quality time together, but the truth is that i have been working very hard on a project for work and i haven't had much time for anyone but you. as soon as i've put you to bed and have had a bite to eat, i've been going upstairs to the office and working until late at night while daddy watches tv and falls asleep on the couch. but now my project is done and i am going to spend as much time with the two of you as i can. the day before daddy's surgery, we'll drop you at daycare in the morning and then spend the whole day together, just the two of us, for the first time since you were born.

you are sleeping right now, very peacefully. oblivious to what is going on.

you have your own agenda. today you managed to move yourself all the way from the living room to the kitchen. you don't crawl, exactly. a little bit of crawling in reverse, maybe. mostly you scoot and roll, but it seems to be working for you. it seems to be a lot of fun for you to be able to get places on your own now.

this morning it rained. there's been a little nip of fall in the air. we are turning corners, little one. we'll find out together what's around the bend.