This space has been quiet for most of this year. I don’t know if it shall reawaken again. For now, I’m letting it go. I just don’t have anything more to say than, “I saw a whole other future. I can’t stop seeing it.” And how many times can one really read write about that? Should this space come alive again, it will be because I have found more words. As of now, there are not any.
Denouement
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Year 2: Part 3
Year 2: Part 2
And now the part, where I sound like I’m bragging
With the verbal leap has come a shocking intellectual one. Shocking to me, because I not one of those Alpha Moms who reads chapter books to her child before bed time, reads quality parenting books, and actively devises lesson plans. Rather, I am a mom who tries to disguise boredom when asked to read Brown Bear six times in a row. We actually own very few toddler books (I prefer to check them out from the library), and several of the ones we do own consist of nothing more than a picture letter or number on each page and a pretty illustration or photo. So, I was a bit caught off guard one day in May when we pulled up to one of our local grocery chains and she began to point and shout. “O! O! OOoooOOO!” from the back seat.
Since this occurred during The Period of Acquiring Many New Words, I assumed at first that her O was just a general sound of excitement. But she was pointing wildly, and continued to point and shout O as I released her from the car seat and plopped her into a cart. It was only then that I realized she was pointing at the large letters on the front of the store: V O N S.
How does she know that’s an O?!
Soon, O would be joined by A, Y, E, I, and U. By mid-June, she would be able to sit on my lap and say almost every letter out loud (F, S, and R are the exceptions. She can point to these when I say them, but she lacks the motor skills to form these sounds yet). Pointing out letters and naming them is now her favorite past time. She also likes to write them, but her handwriting is purely imaginary at this point. It amounts to scribbles on a paper, and I’m honestly in no rush for it to progress any further.
On a similar note, she has decided in the past week that she loves to count to ten (always skipping seven, though. It’s a number she recognizes when asked, but I’m guessing it’s a pronunciation issue again). I don’t think there is anything worth noting about by-rote counting as this is merely recitation. What shocked me was that, like the alphabet, she has learned what the numbers 0 through 10 look like and she can name them as objects. she also has at least a rudimentary understanding of there being a sense of order and counting because we can tell her that she may have have two or three tomatoes and she attempts to count them (not always successfully).
I’m noting this here because I know it’s unusual. I’m not placing any meaning on it, I’m merely noting it as a quality that is unique to her (much like her strange eye color or late growing teeth). Actually, placing any meaning at all terrifies me. I am too imperfect, too flawed, and often too self-absorbed to be a mother to an unusual child. The idea that my resources–financial, intellectual, emotional–may be inadequate to give her what she needs chills me to bones. I google “22-month baby recognize letters” and my results turn up nothing tangible. Like so many mothers who have searched longingly, but for very different reasons, I’m looking to see her placement on the milestone chart. I want to be safe in the knowledge that she’s somewhere n that curve, and just like everyone else. She can’t use a shape sorter. That evens things out, right?
Year Two: Part 1
At some point, she said, Momma.
I say that as though I don’t know exactly when it happened. As though I I hadn’t been waiting for that moment since I first peed on a digital stick and it said: Pregnant. She was 18-months old. It was the week before the Super Bowl, a few days after my birthday. She said it nonchalantly, as though saying momma were completely ordinary for her. As though she had been saying it for half her life, which is exactly how long she had been saying Dadda, which was eventually replaced with Daddy.
I loved being called Momma, but it wasn’t meant to last. These last few months have been marred by the constant arrival of teeth. From 12-months to 19, she had exactly four teeth. Sweet little beaver teeth in the front of her mouth. Plenty enough to tear off food and mash with her gums and jaws, but poor substitutes for the tongue controlling bicuspids and sound vibrating molars she has sprouted since turning 1 1/2. And with all of those teeth has come a slurry of words. She was a formidable gesturer and grunter (Ohhhh could she point, scowl, and squawk) for as long as I can remember. But those grunts and points have been replaced with This and That. Her musical Uhhh-OhhooOOhhh now has tons of explication. Things GO Up! They Fall Down! What was once merely Ow, is now Knee hurt. Hurt my leg.
And in all that need for clarifying her thoughts, for speaking so that she might be understood, for annunciating, Momma vanished almost as quickly as it came. Two weeks ago, she beckoned me from another room by shouting, Maaah-mee (she says it deep in the throat like that, the ah-sound coming out like the catcalls of brown-skinned day laborers). And ever since then, it’s been my name.
I will always be her mommy, but I miss being her Momma.
Posted in Lyra, Parenting | Tags: language acquisition, momma, toddler
Tap, tap. Is this thing on?
Wow. Things have been eerily quiet around here for quite a while. I hope to correct that soon. The “baby” is rapidly approaching 2-years-old. Maybe I should tell you what she’s been up to. And me, too.
Soon. Stay tuned.
Posted in Nothingness