7 months, 4 weeks, 1 day

Late again, I apologize.

From time to time I have had cause to pause, and look at my son in absolute wonder. The strangest of these came this weekend. We go to a house that belongs to two friends of ours every weekend. Griffin was set up in their bedroom in his portable crib, and when Eric brought him down at the end of the night I felt an almost physical shock, looking at him. At that moment, I saw him as he was, growing, learning; becoming. He is his own person now, and although we will direct his growth, he is himself. Our little Griffin, bonsai son.

He plays. He has not always played, and I fear I would have missed it if not for Eric's insistance on trying to put him on the rug to practice crawling. As I have said, he hated it, and I lost patience with it. One day, though, he simply played with the toys around him. He picks up the toys, pulls, chews, flails, throws them all. He enjoys himself, without constant parental stimulation. Then one day, he rolled. I am sure it was by mistake, but he did it, and then he continued to do it. He can sit upright, he can roll where he wants to go. He gets on his knees, he rocks back and forth, but he hasn't made the next step into crawling. My eyes are on him constantly, because I know he will do it, by accident.

He plays. It is my joy every day to watch him as he plays. I prod toys back into his play area, and I make sure that he's penned off from places we really would rather he not go, and to remove the laptop cord from eager hands.

Can it be possible that I bore him? That once he was not existant, that there was a time when I did not know him? Can it be real, conception? I can't wrap my head around it, that once he was inside me, that my blood pumped through him. I try to understand it, I read again how the egg drops, the sperm fertilizes, the baby grows. I look at his picture, the beautiful ultrasound, I try to remember how he would kick me, and his constant hiccups. I look at his little melon-head, his huge big toes, his ocean-dark eyes. I believe in miracles, he has saved me.

He plays! Give me strength, he plays. One day, he will understand the words that I read to him. We read Green Eggs and Hamtogether, we read Where the Wild Things Are, we read the little soft books about animals his grandmother sent. He scratches at the pages, he grabs the book. He giggles when he watches me as I read. I sit him in my lap, and talk to him face to face, and that makes him laugh too.

His hair has changed colour. He has quite a bit of very light blonde hair. It actually reminds me of my father's hair a little. I love to rub his fuzzy little head.

I say that I "can't wait" for things. I "can't wait" for him to read, to play board games, to play D&D with. It isn't true, I can wait. I already miss so much about how he used to be. This balancing act between joy of the moment, mourning the past, and the promise of the future can be exhausting, and exhilirating.

Love,
Autumn