Eugenious

Dear Elena,

It noticed it first when I went in to order an after-work scone (marionberry at Eugene City Bakery – highly recommended), both to fill me up with calories and to have the opportunity to sit and fill you up. You upstaged me. I know it’s far from the last time. The barista/cookie supplier almost couldn’t make change for the woman in front of me because he was so busy watching you. This was a 23-year-old guy. He said to me, “Her expression is just so wonderful, so open.” You don’t even know you’re charming people like you are. If you can catch their eye, you smile, and they get pulled right in.

Even Tephra knows you’re calm and kind, and that’s high praise, believe me. She lets you grab her fur with your not-so-careful but ultimately benign fingers. She’ll stay in the room when you enter it, which is, let’s be frank, not the case with your brother. After stomping around after her and screaming monosyllabically, he wonders why she runs away at the merest hint of his voice. Not so with you.

Since your six-month birthday, you’ve been swimming, swinging, and sitting for the first time. After seeing that your six-month-old cohort, including Marigold and Finn, was sitting up, I sat you up. And you stayed – pretty much. You can almost get there by yourself.

We took a family outing to the just-above-body-temperature pool at the Tamarack Wellness Center a couple weeks ago. You weren’t quite sure what to think. You are, after all, a showerer rather than a bather. We just got a bathtub last week, and you haven’t been in it yet. So the pool was odd and loud, given the screaming children in the enclosed space. You just wait until I take you down the blue slide this summer.

You’ve even licked a chicken since your six-month birthday – a live one, not a drumstick. Thanks, Leslie!

You can drink from a sippy cup, although not by yourself. You LOVE cheese, but you are a good eater of everything we’ve fed you, from yams laced with spinach to bananas mixed with yogurt. In fact, usually you just can’t get enough, and you will cry in frustration if you finish a bowl of food and we get up to make more: “But I’m still hungry! Stick that spoon in my mouth now.”

Love,
Mommy

This entry was posted in the categories Birthday letters, Elena by julie on Tuesday, 17 March 2009, 10:36. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.