Dear Reese,
The first sounds of thunder in months. I write in bed to you and revel in the first sounds of summer. Though I’m also a little nervous that the power will go out. We got a tornado watch warning this afternoon, when it was still sunny and still, but they are reading the signs.
“All this humidity,” MorMor explains while we visit with her and Cathy at Hatch this evening. We sit outside on the patio. I keep putting your ladybug bucket hat on you, and you keep pulling it off and just squinting into the sun instead.
Later, at dinner, you stop eating and start making faces, and the blowout that follows seems to have missed your diaper entirely. You spend 30 minutes doing naked baby time, crawling around the house until the kitchen is clean (and your booster seat sanitized), before we put you in the bath. You only get your finger stuck in the dining chair rungs once.
I don’t mind the bit of chaos. It makes me smile when you end up sitting naked in my lap on the kitchen floor while I offer you a bottle and you laugh at your reflection in the dishwasher. It’s domestic. The kind of life I want.
Still, I am feeling a little wrung out by the time I’m sitting beside the bathtub with you. In the everlasting sickness of our household, I am worried I’m coming down with whatever the latest version of illness you had this week, but I feel better after a shower.
I’m sure I’ll say stuff like this until your eyes roll, but simple things like that — take a shower, go outside, move your body, feed your body — can be incredible resets.
The thunder booms now. The rain picks up. The power is still on for now. Merlin and Arthur rest at the foot of my bed. You are asleep on the monitor. I see your hand move, a little wave against the sheets, before your body rests again.
Love,
Mama