Keeping up

Dear Alex has been growing by leaps and bounds - and life has gotten so tremenously busy that it's been hard to keep up and keep track of her prodigious growth and progress as a human being, which after all, is what we're here for. (not me as a writer, but as a parent) There was something about the timing of the too-brief trip to Florida that brought home how much is going on with her daily, (5 straight days, including some very long ones) and how much being mindful pays off. I wrote a while back about her stage in language development, about jargoning and such, and now it's ancient history. She's a constant wonder, and It's so much fun to watch her try to make sense of things. Over the last few weeks she's gone from one or two words at a time to contextually (but not necessarily grammatically) correct three or four word sentences - and her enthusiasm for using her new words is a joy to watch - "gofora rideinda car" or the calls for "taxi, taxi" as we walk down the street never fails to make me smile. There's a thousand things just like that that I hope to be able to write more articulately about, and a thousand moments like that in the last few weeks that I hope I'll never forget as she grows and we move on to issues like pre-schools and serious potty-training. Tonight we had a moment like that - Beautiful Wife and Dear Alex took me out to dinner for my birthday(thank you!), we went across the street to the Outback (not for the quality of the food, but because it's easy and kid-friendly and I didn't feel like cooking) and we had a delightful meal - Dear Alex had broccoli and carrots and Daddy's french fries and BW's chicken and macaroni and cheese - the kid likes to eat. During the meal though, she started repeating "moon, moon, moon" and looking up. It took us a while to figure out what she was referring to, and it turned out to be simple - the light fixtures directly overhead were perfect half-circles of light, and they look an awful lot like the perfect half moon that's riding high in the night sky outside my window as I write.