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Ess loves it when we goof around with this mirror/bunny that sits in the back seat.

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During a family trip to Smiling Pelican Bakeshop in Maiden Rock, Wisconsin.

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Sunday evening found us driving home from Forest Lake, a bit after Essie’s bedtime. She still tells me “bach seat, Dada” if she wants some company on these longer drives, but this time she seemed just fine with Mykala and me in the front, and her in the twilight in the backseat. Now, Ess talks a lot lately, most of it narrating or monologuing about what she is doing and what she is imagining as she plays. A lot of diapers changed (“put onna keem”), a lot of tucking in and napping. More recently, she plays mama and baby (pig/giraffe/monkey/spoons/pair of shoes), and one of them says “I love you” and gives a kiss. But during the drive, she wasn’t playing with anything in particular, so instead, we hear this:

Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down
People on the bus go up and down up and down

I felt a feeling of accomplishment (hers, ours, mostly hers) where two years ago she could barely move, had no teeth, couldn’t understand us. And now she’s singing “Wheels on the Bus” as we drive home. We are not yet at a stage where her learning and changing are any source of melancholy for a passing phase we’ll never see again. Instead, her transformation from helpless to thoughtful and willful produce unalloyed joy in her parents.

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We’ve been teaching Ess that people have more than one name. For example, her grandpa Bop’s name is Michael. “I know a Michael, I know a Michael!” she explains, riffing off her book I Know a Monkey. So, my nickname for Mykala is Bun, which we told Ess kind of in passing, not intending to or even trying really to teach it to her.

So, of course I always prompt Ess with “say goodnight to Mama” when I am carrying her to bed, but tonight she goes “Goonight Bun! … I love you, Bun!”

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Mykala accidentally dyed her hair orange today, which kind of sidetracked our movie plans. (After some corrections, it’s currently more of a henna shade.) So, Ess and I headed over to my parents for a visit. She was unusually quiet in her carseat, watching the big drops hit her window. At my parent’s, I got to see how Ess is trying to figure out how to go to the bathroom not in her diaper; she’d tell use she wanted to sit on her potty chair, and then absolutely nothing would happen. The stages of connecting the urge to the action to the result are interesting — like the animal and human parts of the brain are learning to communicate for the first time.

We drove home in the dark, the rain still steadily falling. Pulled into the garage and I gently lifted Ess out of the car, pecking her on the cheek as I did so. “Love you Dada” I heard her say unprompted, for the first time she ever has. Then, she immediately began commenting on the color of the lid of our trash can.

“Wait, what did you say?”
“Green top onna trash can.”
“No no, before that.”
“Trash can.”
“Oh, Ess.”

But I know I heard it for real.

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Paul McCartney, 1965: “Yesterday came suddenly.” I don’t know what that means, but if I squint, it looks like he’s saying time passes quickly.

So, yesterday: I got done with work and went to my parent’s to pick up Ess. She now knows how to put her little shoes on. They look like this:

So she showed us that. It was cool out, in the 50s, and Ess told us all she’d like to go outside. She ran off to find her sweatshirt, and Nannie zipped it up for her. (Later that evening Ess told me: “Dada has a zipper. Baby has a zipper. Mama has a zipper. … Everybody has a zipper!”) Then, we went outside to see the neighbor’s painted rocks. And the wildflowers. And the birdbath. And the carved bear in the corner of the yard. And the plane in the sky.

Ess wants to be picked up (“uppa dee, Dada”) or very much not: “No, own-baby walk.” She wants someone special to feed her (Mama) or her highchair to be in a very precise spot. When she tripped over and displaced the picnic blanket last week, I told Mykala “she’s going to put that back now.” But I underestimated her care and patience in placing it precisely how she wanted it to lay. Her mind is filled with thoughts and we get to hear them; this is a source of boundless joy. We’ve waited so anxiously and impatiently to hear those thoughts!

So I brought Ess home through the cool, slightly rainy early fall evening. We watered the plants. She ran inside. Took off her own shoes. I turned on my auto-generated iTunes playlist of 2,028 songs I have played ≥5 times since 2005. And in that random collection I heard, while we were feeding George, Ingrid Michaelson’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Try to listen to that song with your child and do anything other than cry. I remember it clearly, Ess had requested I “ohpee up” the closet door, and just as she was reaching her tiny hand into the big cat food bag, and as I reached to help her find the scoop, big tears jumped out of my eyes.

And Mama came home: “MAMA!” Ess squealed running toward the back door and throwing her arms around the middle of Mykala’s thigh, smiling big as she squeezed tightly. Ess watched Mykala cook, and ran around, reading Make Way for Ducklings while we ate. I worried aloud if us eating at the table and her running about was a bad precedent, but watching Ess run out of the kitchen and throw herself onto the couch and then run back to us with her update from the living room was just too good to interrupt.

As we read nighttime stories like Dinosaurumpus and I Know a Monkey to Ess, the cool air made the blankets of our bed more comfortable. Her big compliment right now: “good book.” Then, once we had put her in her crib for the night and turned the monitor on, a little voice sang over the speaker: “Baby Beluga in the deep blue sheee. Oh!”

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