Time
It has been five years since I went flying off my bike. Five years. 60 months. I still wear the Patagonia jacket I was wearing when that accident happened; wore it today, in fact. That’s a testament to Patagonia’s quality, I guess. I still don’t like most of their color schemes for their stuff, which explains why my jacket from them is all black. But like I said, great stuff.
These thoughts aren’t about stuff, though. They’re about time, how quickly it goes. I told Mykala and she immediately said “In five years, Ess will be in kindergarten.”
So, right now I will write about what’s going on to try to slow down this time that is flying by. Ess is 6.5 months old, going in for some more immunizations next week, and has an incredible personality. Whenever we have her in the Björn and she sees something she’s interested in, she kicks her legs around extremely excitedly. So excitedly that two separate strangers commented on it to Mykala when she was with Ess at the State Dance Line competition at the Target Center today. Myself, I was at work, had been all the days this week (I’ve been lucky enough to mostly have a partial schedule, about 3.5-4 days per week depending on the season) and I was missing Ess. So, I come home, Mykala and Ess arrived shortly after that, and I picked her up out of her car seat.
Inches from my face, hers lights up when she recognizes me, and she immediately reaches for my nose. She can’t say it, but I interpret the look as “Dad!!” Which I love. Love love love. These are the things I want to remember. Upstairs for a diaper change, Ess just outgrew her tiny prefold cotton infant diapers and is now into a larger size. She loves diaper change time and looks everywhere she can above her head, enjoying the freedom and looking for something to hold and babble at. So far we’ve just been changing breastmilk diapers, which I’m told is easy compared to solid food diapers. At this point, Ess has tried sweet potatoes (lots of shudders), oatmeal, and avocado. The night she ate the most oatmeal was also the night she puked up everything inside her for almost an hour straight. The two events, I think, are unrelated, but it makes you pause before you try to feed her that much oatmeal again.
After her diaper was changed, downstairs again to have to food from mom. Ess can point with her pointer finger, and she chooses to do this at every opportunity she gets. Point at this, point at that, point at some keys on the piano while dad plays. Her favorite toy right now is strips of paper Mykala cut out and put into an empty Kleenex box. Ess just smiles and kicks her legs and reaches for that box whenever she sees it, she is totally psyched to pull out each and every scrap of paper.
Ess is also a huge fan of a little banana-shaped curved rainbow colored bolster we’ve named Tubey. She also loves Jill Duck (named by Mykala), and as always, Squirt the turtle from Finding Nemo.
Essie has two teeth, #O & P (mandibular central incisors), and she seems to have taken a holiday from cutting more for a little bit. This is a relief for everyone, because it affected her sleeping. Poor little one is having a hard enough time sleeping right now; she’s only been able to do a few hours at a time before getting upset. We are constantly talking and brainstorming ways to communicate to her that she is fine and she can go back to sleep since we can’t use words to explain this to her. In the meantime, we’re all tired. Mykala hasn’t slept through the night since July 22, 2014.
And so I file away this little time capsule, sliding it on top of the pile of writing that has become this space. Someday in the future, on a chance browsing, I’ll run across it again and remember this time. At the tail end of my 20s, a new parent, learning some things in dentistry, taking walks with my lovely wife. Future self, this is your past self saying “hi, I’m OK!” You are lucky to be a dad, and even luckier to be the dad of such a spitfire spirit as your daughter. She’s amazing.