Mom and Bill are here this week, and Kent is having a great time with them. The last few times we saw them in the spring and summer, he was in his uber-clingy stage, not wanting them to hold him and interacting with them only a little. This time, though, he's finally old enough that he's warming to them, and they're so happy! When Mom picked up one of his books to look at it yesterday, after they'd been here less than an hour, Kent walked over and said, "Lap! Lap!" so that she'd pick him up and read to him. He was sweet and snuggly the whole time she was reading.

Mom's grandmother name is GranDebbie, and since that's a mouthful for a kid who only uses one or two syllables, he calls her "Day-Day" right now. We were at Jason's Deli for dinner last night, and every time she got up to go back to the salad bar, he'd start shouting, "Day-Day, DAY-DAY!" as in, "Dude, I like you — where are you going?!?!" He kept saying her name last night and this morning while they were away at the hotel, and he was so very excited to see the two of them when they came back over after breakfast.

We also had the big unveiling of the play kitchen yesterday evening, and he's been throwing himself headlong into investigation of its many properties. He'll be a chef one day very soon. Right now, he's all about opening the doors and banging the dishes around, but he'll get more interested in his cool wooden play food soon, and then you guys had better watch out. Expect me to regale you with tales of his menu planning, which I'm sure will be very advanced for his age. Maybe he'll even give me some new recipes to try, like today's steak and butter sandwich that I concocted with his help (the sandwich amounted to a T-bone steak and an entire box of butter between two slices of bread. I pretended to like it).

We went to the park after lunch today, and Kent and I ended up having a few minutes alone on the swings, because Mom was sleeping off a migraine back at the hotel, and Bill (who had been playing with us and some of the other kids for a long time) was taking a break, on the phone with a friend of his for a brief catch-up conversation. Other kids were using the baby swings, so I had Kent on my lap on a big swing with my arms wrapped around the chains and holding him in place. My legs get kind of sore that way, but it's fun for him, so I generally keep going for longer than my body wants to.

After a little while, I decided to turn him around in my lap so that he was straddling me and facing my chest, and he turned his head to the side and started snuggling me right away. He was deliciously warm and still. He's almost never still these days. I drank in this moment, wanting to burn it into my memory, because I know he won't want to swing on my lap as he gets older and more independent. I held him, stroking his cheek and smelling his hair, knowing that if I gave into my sore legs and slowed down, the moment would be over, so I just kept swinging. He actually almost fell asleep, but then some kids next to us started talking, so he turned and looked at them for a while before he put his head up, looked in my eyes, and signed "all done" to let me know he was ready for the next thing.

2008 has seen Kent grow from a virtual sack of potatoes who could barely hold his head up into a running, laughing, Elmo-loving, occasional-potty-using, brilliant and hilarious little boy. 2009 can only get better, even if there's a bit less snuggling as he finds his wings.

Labels: family, holidays, Kent, kitchen adventures

• posted by erica 12/31/2008 05:16:00 PM
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