One Great Turning: Blue Fish, Pink Bird, Yellow Star.

Mandarin’s developmental milestones are on a roll. Her most recent being standing up and a real crawl. It’s official! No longer the zombie drag of leg and foot or the seal belly flop. Today, I watched her crawl and move around her play mat on all fours. This of course only means one thing. I need to move my eyes to the back of my head because as soon as I turn around she’s going to jet across the living room and live out the awful scenarios in my head. Like when I turned my back for literally FIVE seconds and suddenly she’s standing up in her high chair. I’ll take that heart attack right now please.

There are a million things that can go wrong and as much as we’d like to build a safety bubble around our children, they will somehow still manage to find a way to hurt themselves. Accidentally. Take ME for example. As much as my parents wanted to protect me, I managed to fracture my left elbow, faint publicly and dislocate my knee. All before I was 18 and none of which involved sports or school. The first while standing on one of those office chairs with wheels, using it as a rolling ladder to get from one end of the shelf to the other while sipping on a juice box. Real smart. The second: dehydration while attending a Pearl Jam concert and the other, well, it was at a Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, and Beastie Boys concert. Mosh Pit. Another story for another time.

Given the confines of a slated sterile area; a blanket, a mat, an imaginary line where we figuratively draw and fence out the dirty from the clean, why does she still manage to find the laptop cord that I’ve piped along the couch cushions for stealth reasons? I get paranoid that if she gets a hold of it and follows where it leads to her fingers will discover the socket. Like leaving a trail of crumbs. Her attention to indiscriminate things amazes me. The single button on her shirt, any kind of tag, the remote control, the logo on Daddy’s shoe. Her curiosity is entertaining. For now (not when she turns 15!).

And the blue fish, pink bird and yellow star? The point is that she knows what they are. They’re part of a toy that she jiggles around through the day, and there have been a number of times on separate occasions that she’s pointed them out to me when asked where this and that is.

My nine month old. Such great heights.

She is exactly as old as the length of time I carried her through horrific heartburns, backaches, stretch marks, swollen feet and the magical trimesters of feeling my own child grow and stretch and kick - from the inside. Now that she’s here with me, I am drawn to the details ( just like she is ) the delicate curl of her lashes, the lingering sweetness of peach-mango snacks in her palms and how her big toe reminds me of a blueberry. There are many days when I feel lost in the cycles of rinse and repeat and the forecast of dark clouds and sunny breaks and the rest of the stay-at-home hackneyed presets.