The things coming out of Hank's mouth these days are priceless. At 4 years, 4 months, he is becoming quite the crack up. Time to record a few for posterity:
Me: "hank, can you stop running in circles?"
Hank (changes course slightly, but doesn't slow down): "ok! How about rectangles?"
Hank, over and over again, asked about anything and everything: "why? why? why?"
me: "Hank, honey, I don't know why. Why do you think it is like it is?"
Hank, incredulously: "Mommy, I don't think!!"
Hank (holding up a dinosaur): "This is a t-rex. And this is a brontosaurus. And this is a triceratops. And this is a bracheosaurus. And this is a pteranadon."
Hank (holding up a dinosaur with one horn on its head): "mommy, what kind of dinosaur is this?"
Me: "well, honey, I'm not sure. What do you think it is?"
Hank: "I think it must be a hornasaurus"
(Hank picks up a dinosaur with lots and lots of horns) "and this is a lotahornasaurus".
Checking things out at a neighborhood garage sale,
"hank -- what do you think of that couch?"
"that couch is HIDEOUS!!"
He also says some of the sweetest things I've ever heard. When I arrived home on Saturday afternoon after my pottery class, I was checking something out in the front yard before going in the house. I hear the front door open, and Hank bounces out of the house and across the lawn to hug me. On the way he picks a dandelion and blows all the seeds off. I ask, "Did you get your wish?" He said, "Yes!" "What did you wish for, sweetie?" "YOU!!!"
And did I mention that Becket, not even 9 months yet, learned to climb up the stairs?
Where is the time going? I wouldn't say I have any regrets about how fast this time is going, but I do sometimes feel a little sad about how quickly it is disappearing, and how my experience of this baby is so very different from my experience with Hank as a baby. I wish that I could have replicated that pace and intimacy with Beckett, but there is just no way to do that with an older child in the house. My time with Beckett has been incredibly special in its own right, just a very different experience, over all.
A few nights ago I dreamed about one of my lost babies. It was the little girl, and I've never "met" her* before. Whenever she's appeared to me, she is never living. In this dream we were in a place, maybe up in Tilden Park, and there was a forest fire approaching, and it was clear that we needed to get out of where we were, and fast. Henry and I were gathering our boys up, and a little toddler girl, maybe 18 months old (close in age to what that baby would be, had she made it to the outside), toddled up to us, and kept gesturing to me to pick her up. She had no parents around her. She had fine, curly, blond hair, tired eyes, and was wearing a pink wool coat, similar to a coat that I've seen pictures of myself wearing as a toddler. It became very clear, very fast, that I was supposed to be her mother, but that this was the first time we had seen each other. I took her in my arms, and she did all the things that a freshly born baby does with its mother -- sought a breast to nurse, searched my face for recognition and connection, found it.
*I know that the last loss was a girl, because of the chromosomal analysis.
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