I just finished watching City of God with Stacy and I'd like to say, first of all, that this is duh and obviously the best cuddle up on the couch and have some popcorn with your wife movie ever. Super romantic. That is, if you think kids shooting each other in the slums of Rio de Janeiro in the 80s is romantic. Different strokes for different folks and all.
In all seriousness, City of God was really disturbing, super violent, and well done. But the scene where the kid has to choose which one to kill between two smaller kids was especially hard to watch. The youngest kid looked a lot like Gavin. Actually, he didn't look anything like Gavin, but he reminded me of Gavin. He was essentially a baby. With a gun aimed at his head. Jesus. I am going to have nightmares for sure.
On the way home this evening I stopped at Whole Foods today and bought baby cereal (hey! Great segue. Very smooth. Good use of transitions. #1 college writing teacher ever, thank you very much) and on the way home I realized it was later than I thought and I had this sudden panicked feeling that Stacy was going to put Gavin to bed before I would get to see him and kiss him goodnight. I thought about what it feels like to kiss his baby cheeks (soft, smooth, padded. Basically made for kissing) and it suddenly dawned on me that he is growing so fast and changing so fast. Not that I didn't realize that before (and "suddenly dawned on me" is cliché and lazy writing, but I'm tired). It's just that I'd never really thought of it in terms of what you don't get back, if that makes sense. It's the first time that I can recall mourning his babyhood. Not that I subconsciously his babyhood or anything, but I'd never really thought about Gavin growing up in terms of loss. I did say to my sister the other day that I was kissing Gavin's ear and thought, "There will come a day when I will never kiss these earlobes again." She more or less said, "Um, hopefully there will come a day when you don't want to" and looked at me in a way that implied, "You sicko."
And no, none of this makes me want another baby. It's not about babies in general. It's about Gavin. Even if we had another baby that wouldn't stop these feelings about Gavin. Though I might be too busy to notice them. Which would be sad.
Today's adventure involved driving Aunt Laura to work, and since she works at the Detroit Science Center and since Gavin and I were in search of something to do together today while Stacy was at work, guess where we went? Okay, don't strain yourself. We went to the DSC. Kids Town, specifically. It was a lot of fun. The first thing he did when we got there was make a beeline to a wooden push-em-ride-em fire truck that, in fact, was already being used by another Kids Town patron. Her name was Piper and it was her first birthday today. She was very tiny compared to Gavin. Her mom (I'm assuming it was her mom) was filming her every move and since many of those moves included Gavin (she stuck her fingers in his mouth at one point), my son is on film and years from now when her parents show her this video she'll say, "Who is that giant boy trying to commandeer the firetruck?" And they'll say, "We don't know, Honey. That was so long ago." And then hopefully they'll remark about how indescribably handsome he was then and how handsome he probably is now (and by "now" I obviously mean the future. Keep up).
Gavin is really into reality based playing right now. He is very interested in how things fit together. How you can put one object inside another (like this evening in the bathtub when he figured out that you could fill the cup with the wet washcloth). He wants to climb on top of stuff. He wants to pull everything out of the cupboards and drawers. He wants to move things around the room. If he can push it like a lawnmower then even better. Yesterday we went to the community center with his Aunt Amanda and in the play area there's a pretend Dirt Devil vacuum. Gavin loved it. He pushed the thing all over that place. If it actually picked up dirt I would buy him one in a heart beat. Why shouldn't he multitask playing with light chores? At Kids Town there's a room with apple trees painted on the walls and wooden apples attached with magnets that kids can pick and put in baskets. Gavin spent most of his time taking apples off the wall and putting them into one of the baskets and then transferring the apples from that bucket to the other bucket. If you don't have kids this might sounds like something really boring to watch, but I was totally enthralled. Sure, it sounds simple, but this is but one example of how he's learning to manipulate his world. You could almost hear the gears turning in his brain. So many things that we take for granted today, like walking and talking, were things that we had to learn and that we worked so hard on with all of our baby might. And there was Gavin doing just that, learning before my eyes. I didn't interact or intrude, just sat back and watched. It was a definite Gavin the Earth Scientist moment. And after awhile when he was done playing he walked toward me and wrapped his arms around my neck. It was so sweet. Maybe that's why this evening I felt like everything depended on me getting home to see him, to not waste this time that's going by so fast.
Woah, Ms. Serious Pants. Where are the jokes about poo and Elmo (not necessarily together, though certainly not far removed from each other in terms of awfulness)? Sorry. Here. Stacy stumbled upon this the other night. It would be much better titled "The Toddler Manifesto."
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