Dear Reese,
We bookend daycare out of the routine — an 8 am appointment for your second dose of the flu shot and then a stop on the way home this evening to vote.
Flu shot: you took it like a champ, just like last time, but your temperature is a little elevated tonight (and you’re fussy enough that I know you don’t feel well), so I give you Tylenol before bed.
Voting: it’s your third time coming with me to the polls this year. We are voter number fifty-one at five-thirty p.m. — it’s a small village. I vote for Jill Underlay for WI State Superintendent and you hold the “Voter” sticker on the drive home.
My own temperature gets wonky gain for a minute tonight and I’ve had that lingering productive cough for three weeks so I start to think MorMor is right and maybe I should do something about it rather than wait for it to away. This cold snap isn’t helping (but thankfully we didn’t run into another cold day today where daycare was closed).
I feel just off enough that I relax by your bathtub, turn on a podcast, and eat up the baby star puff snacks you didn’t want with dinner while you play in the bath. The snacks are strawberry apple flavored and pretty good, darling. You keep refusing your bottle this evening but you eat more leftover mac & cheese than I’ve ever seen you eat anything. Perhaps even the majority of it gets in your stomach. It gives me hope that you’ll take to solids yet.
Sometimes, recently, while we read, you’ll turn the pages for me on cue. “Turn the page,” I say and you reach for the board book page I’ve lifted just enough so you can grab it yourself. You give up halfway through the book tonight in favor of rubbing your eyes.
But I see it in your bright gaze each day: understanding. The world is getting more and more exciting for you.
Love,
Mama