Blog a la Cart

Precious Sunny girl,

This weekend I went home to Cohasset to say my final good-byes to my childhood home. I did it alone because I needed to make peace with the situation in some solitude, and, quiet frankly, your boisterous exultations, while highly adorable, are also highly distracting.

I feel fortunate that I was able to share that magical home with you on more than one occasion during your 11 months of life (despite living across the country from it for most of that period) and that there are pictures of us together in front of that tall grassy hill where I once posed as a child, and on our harbor where I spent so many happy summers in my little sailboat. Having you in my life has made this farewell and transition a tad easier, because as I look at you I am reminded of the future and the home that we will build together as a family. You have helped turn my head forward when I am steeped in nostalgia and sadness. For this, I am eternally grateful.

While I was out east, Daddy took you and Ursa westward to Blooming Grove, another very important and magical place. You will be the fifth generation of the Cart family to walk those fields and play in those streams, to swim in that clear lake and to throw tomatoes bedecked in red each Labor Day. That kind of family history is a rare and beautiful gift, and to be able to share it with not only your father and grandparents, but also your GREAT grandparents is incredible. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.

You turned 11 months on Sunday, and when we reunited back home on Monday morning I was blown away by how changed and grown you had become in just three days time. It’s as if you knew you were approaching the final period where your age is tallied by the months and you had to show mama just how big you are. To think that in just a month’s time you will be defined in terms of years is mind-blowing.

Your hair is long and hangs in your face but I refuse to get it cut thanks to a less-than-positive experience when you were wee. You now pull all bows out of your hair so we have to put them in ridiculous pig tails in order to keep you from resembling cousin IT. I’m clinging to that hair because I know that a haircut will only exacerbate your transition from babyhood to toddlerdom. And I’m not ready to loose my baby just yet.

With that being said, you are so active and full of life that the only time I’m allowed to cradle you like a baby  is when I feed you the bottle (a grown baby bottle now filled with organic cow’s milk we’re having delivered from a local farm. Bye bye formula!) and lay you down to sleep.

This month you learned to play so many new games, and Daddy and I just can’t get enough of how very interactive you are. Fairy godfather Jeremy taught you how to share blocks and clap them together. And both your fairy godparents bore witness to your love of knocking down any attempt at building a block tower. You love to empty all bins, bowls, or barrels, and then very proudly put each item back in its place.You pull magnets on and off the fridge and clap with delight each time they successfully stick back onto the appliance.

You learned to walk around the house using your wooden push cart for support and I fear you may be independently walking by your 1st birthday party. You flail your arms and bounce whenever your favorite songs come on the stereo – the African lullabies CD from Courtney is your all time favorite, particularly the  South African folk song Shosholoza which we all know by heart. You’ve joined a music play group with Daddy, and I was a proud mama bear when one of the parents in the playgroup emailed me to tell me just how wonderfully you are adjusting to playing with all the big kids. You are fearless, and love to explore and bang on the drums or your wooden xylophone. You learned the joys of egg hunting and discovering the goodies tucked inside. You hug your blankies and baby dolls when you get sleepy at night, and there is nothing that brings you greater joy than your puppy (and all dogs) and flipping through the pages in your many board books. We have a budding literary nerd on our hands.

Your palette expands daily, and Daddy has turned you into a little hummus monster. He makes fresh hummus by the tubs, and your favorite is the curried which you smear all over your face and lovingly offer to Ursa. A trip to India is in our future.

You are incredibly opinionated and demanding. You know what you want, when you want it, and have taken to throwing mini-tantrums when not allowed access to outlets, sharp objects, Ursa’s water bowl, etc. You are easily distracted, so these never last for more than a minute, but Daddy and I can’t help but laugh when we see you filled with such frustration. In our eyes, everything you do is adorable. Even when you’re turning bright red in anger and hurling your tomato sauce covered lasagna all over the floor. Still presh.

My favorite moment from this past month happened last week when you were having a fitful, restless night thanks to those evil-gum-piercing buggers called teeth. It was 2:30 in the morning and your Daddy had been tending to you earlier in the night, so I headed into the nursery to try and comfort you. You were still making quite the ruckus, so I carried you into the guest room located on the opposite side of the house to muffle your cries for Daddy. We curled up in the bed which is the four-poster princess bed that I grew up sleeping in. You nestled up on my chest with your blankie shoved in your mouth to help relieve the teething pains. You then drifted off to sleep and I lay there listening to you and your baby snore and thinking about all the stories that that bed could tell if only she could speak.

Doda has always said that he felt like Alistair Cooke from Masterpiece Theater sharing that very same bed with Momar when they were first married. She (the bed)  is the matriarch of the family, and certainly has that air of history and grace.

The bed came over to America in 1860 via boat (obviously) when your great-great-great-great-great grandparents immigrated here from Germany. In fact, your great-great-great-great grandfather was born in that bed. It has been passed down generation after generation, from first born woman in the family to first born woman. I lay there thinking of each of our grandmothers – Munner, Momo, Grammy and now Momar – and the six generations of first born women who shared that very frame. While you won’t ever have the pleasure of meeting your Momo or Grammy, we are all connected through that hand-turned, antique wood piece of furniture. A bed where we dreamed, giggled with girlfriends, cried when heartbroken, read into the late hours of the evening, and grew from girl to woman. And now it is yours and you will carry on the tradition, building forts, hiding under her frame, snuggling up with your puppy dog, whispering on the phone with your first boyfriend who at the time you’ll consider your first love in the middle of the night, and one day sleeping with your ACTUAL love under the history of many generations before you.

Doda told me that there is a French movie where a bed is the narrator and main character of the film. The bed tells the story of an entire family’s history, slowly turning back time to its origin.

The four-poster could map a very similar tale for our family. And you, darling girl, became a part of its history this month as you nestled into her covers for the very first time, launching your own story.

And so, for the final time before months are converted to years…

Happy 11 Months, baby girl.

143 Mama