Letter from February

Oliver's development has always been a full-tilt run into the future, barely captured by the click of a camera shutter. Watching Finn master new skills is more like time-lapse photography of a flower opening. Each petal unfurls at its own pace, at exactly the right moment, one by one, until the wondrous whole emerges.

At 15 months, Finn stands poised on the threshold between baby and toddler. He is right on the brink of so many things: he crawls as often as not, and when he does walk still toddles from one safe harbor to the next with hands held high for balance. Language, too, runs just below the surface, the occasional crystal clear word, "hi" or "duck" bubbling to to the surface then subsiding in favor of the gestures and babbles that convey his intentions so well.

He is enthusiastic about food, but relies on nursing as the mainstay of his diet, telling me it's time by laying his round cheek against my shoulder. When I ask "Do you want to nurse?" his whole body nods and he makes sure there is no confusion by adding " yeah! yeah!", then plucks my glasses off my face to make sure I can't go anywhere without him and pulls off his own shoes and socks so he can be perfectly comfortable.

Coming home tonight after a late-afternoon meeting, I stepped into the kitchen to a flurry of welcome. Oliver greeted me in mid-sentence, so excited to tell me a story that the words fought to come out of his mouth in a jumbled stream. Finn heard my voice from the living room and screeched toward me, towing Alonso for balance and maximum speed. While Oliver filled me in on all the happenings, Finn gazed into my eyes, snuggled under my chin, wrapped his fingers in my hair and held on tight.

Life is so good and so very, very busy right now. We are in the midst of investigating kindergartens for Oliver. Work hums along with a steady stream of meetings and projects, and the dry and mild winter allows for plenty of garden projects. Two full beds are planted with peas and Oliver enthusiastically started 1/2 an ounce of lettuce seed in 6-packs--the seed sowed so thickly, the sprouts are lifting the entire surface of the soil as they grow. There are permanent piles of jackets, library books, garden gloves and lunch boxes on every surface, their height limited only by their structural soundness. I lost my car keys for three days recently. And it's almost spring.