18 months

I’m trying to record what Julian does at certain ages so that I do not forget. Already I have missed him doing the carefree spins and squats to Johnny Cash songs that were months 12 – 14; now when I play the man in black and discreetly turn on the camera, Julian sucks his thumb and eyes me warily.

So many things are brand new to him. He laughs a fascinated, shriek-y laugh tinged with fright as I karate a plastic Kroger bag, kicking and punching it to keep it afloat. He drags a mixing bowl out of the cabinet to sit and spin in it. He mounts his trike backwards to roll down the ditch, and he breaks rice cakes into perfect kernels to surrepticiously stuff into his ear.  

All photos by Carter Andrews

He frustrates easily. We have one of those boxes with holes in common shapes and blocks that fit through their respective holes. He picks up the clover or the star, shoves it around the box for a second or two, and then hurls the block across the room, whipping his head back toward me to dare me to instruct differently.

He makes my heart sing with his version of a kiss, an open-mouthed wipe across my cheek with snot and slobber included. He pangs my core when he scrapes his knee and runs around me to his Grandeli.

He runs to the book basket for story after story, handing me the book and then turning his back to me and backing up until he falls into my lap, thumb in mouth. While I read, he holds flat dog with the thumb-sucking hand and fingers the animal’s spikes with the other. He likes one page of the Dr. Suess book ‘Wocket in My Pocket’ where the main character finds a Gellar and a Tellar and a Wellar and a Fellar (or whatever –ellars they are) in the cellar. He likes ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?’ and ‘I Love You Through and Through’ and Sandra Boynton books.

He spies Sam’s car pulling in from work and sprints through the house with a yell, and when I open the door he streaks out past Sam, desperate to find a rock or stick to offer to Daddy before giving a hug (if he’ll give a hug). When it is me he’s seeing for the first time at the end of the day, he chatters and chatters and points to the light in the car and lunges out of my arms as soon as I free him from the carseat.

He responds well to a 2 minute warning for going inside, getting in the bath, having his diaper changed – except when he doesn’t. Then he screams and thrashes with fresh power in his lengthening legs. He says ‘uh oh uh oh uh oh’ when he wakes in the morning and ‘beep beep’ with the microwave as his oatmeal finishes and ‘bye’ to the person who is already out the door and just spent the last 3 minutes trying to get him to say ‘bye.’

He still falls asleep with his bum in the air, and I still sneak in a late night diaper change for a chance to cuddle.  The only way to catch him now is to catch him unconscious.