Love Grew

Love started out as a glance. A notice of appearance, of countenance, of demeanor. It did not yet know it was love.

Love grew into talking, into internal giggles, and into verbal analyzing with girlfriends. What did he mean by this, what did he mean by that? Could anything come of this hint of promise?

Love progressed into feelings. The increase of heart beats, the delicious aftertaste of a joke, a shared smile and the full silence after long phone calls.

It grew and it grew until it became the shape of life itself beckoning it's subjects to make choices to join and create a life all on their own. It's sweetness was unknown, foreign but always imagined and now treasured.

At what point did love grow hard? Was it when it didn't know it yet existed? When it didn't know it had arms and legs extending into and changing the very lives it touched? Was it when it metamorphosized into something more than intense feelings, more than day dreams and movies? Was it when it slowly, and painfully transformed into meaning and purpose forcing those who beheld it to metamorphosize and transform themselves?

It no longer took the exciting shape of story filled emails, secret love letters in the mail, spontaneous gifts of jewelry. It became cutting sandwiches into quarters because they taste better that way and feeding spoonfuls of soup into the mouth of a once robust and capable but now debilitated lover. Love offered it's body and mind in exchange for the body and mind of a smaller, but beautiful, other. It became sacrifice and giving, not just of things, but of oneself and of giving up the part of oneself that hurt others.

Love became confusing yet also deep and poignant. Love was no longer just bliss but sadness as well. Love became what is may not have been before, more real.

You Decide

So, they say that babies should be exploring their independence and learning to feed themselves right about the age Monkey is at. I am not convinced. I have treasured the last few weeks of orderly, machine like meals after several weeks of being spit at, of feeding his eye instead of mouth because he insists on moving his head at the last second and of playing tug of war to get the spoon out of his vice like grip.

Yet, I still want to be a good parent or at least follow the CHR protocol. I read their info and I feel like not letting Monkey feed himself is tantamount to clipping those little wings that will someday let him fly from his nest. Oh no! Not my little birdie! So, I decided to give it try. I will let my little baby fly!

So, one day I'm feeding him milk and I think, why not let him hold the bottle. So I release his arm from a modified wrestling hold (if you've fed him you'll know what I mean)and let him explore his burgeoning independence. He immediately stops feeding and begins to massage the nipple while the bottle is still pointing at his head. He squeezes the nipple out of the nipple holder thing and milk comes gushing out all over his clothing, down his neck and all over my arm. He, of course, is unfazed and patiently waits for me to make another bottle.

Ok, no problem. He's learning, right? Next, I introduce him to some Boccincini (pasteurized, of course)and chop it up into little pieces. He opens his mouth like a little bird and squaks like one too if I'm a little late in delivery. I try to hand it to him. He smacks it out of my hand and opens his little mouth. I mumble "I'm sorry Prince Monkey; I will do better next time Prince Monkey". Yet, undeterred I hand him a little plate with pieces of the above mentioned cheese on it. He grasps at the cheese, he squishes them and then dumps them on the floor and proceeds to eat the plate. I spend the next little while grieving over the lost fresh mozzarella that will never know salt nor my taste buds.

Now, I really wouldn't have a problem with him feeding himself rice cereal with a spoon if he didn't always put the wrong side of it in his mouth. Or if he wouldn't fling it around, spraying cereal on me, our couch and floor. I really wouldn't mind if even 25% of the food I gave him made it close to his mouth but it doesn't. Seriously, if I let the kid feed himself he'd starve!

So what do I do? Clip his little wings but ensure he grows up healthy and strong or let those little wings spread across the sky but have no energy to fly because most of his food is on the floor, in his hair or up/on his nose? You decide.

Cuz Everyone Wants to be Published Someday

Maybe I'm projecting here, but I think if given a chance most people would love love love! to write and write and be published and make millions of dollars. Another term for this would be "being Stephanie Meyerized". And even if the money didn't come I think most people would still want to be published. I think that is part of the allure of blogs and the strange fascination so many people have with them. You're being published and you didn't pay a cent. You don't even have to be that good of a writer and your words on that virtual page will last for eternity, floating somewhere in internet space.

So after years of harboring secret disdain for blogging I had to admit, I want to be published too and I don't want to work too hard for it. (Just think of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, don't want to end up like them...) So here I am, a wannabe paperback writer writing, not on tree paper, but on space paper. Check it out! I'm a green wannabe paperback writer! Could this get any better?