Cecilia has reached the cute age. Ellen’s cute too of course, but hers is the “you-are-hilarious-while-trying-to-figure-out-the-world” cute. Cecilia’s is the “OMG-I-want-to-squeeze-your-face-like-silly-putty” cute. When kids can’t completely express themselves on their own, you can just imagine a giant, empty, cartoon word balloon above their heads at all times, and you can fill it with whatever you want. Nice words. Adorable words. Once they start filling in their own word balloons, you get stuff like “Mom, I love you as big as the TV, but I love Dad as big as the whole CITY. I love Dad more than you,” and “wow, my heel looks like a penis. No, ack-shully it looks like that thing BEHIND the penis,” and “I would like spaghetti for dinner, but I HATE sauce. I just want aLOOOOOT of Parma-john cheese.” Those are bad examples, but the ones that don’t even have a hint of cuteness are the ones I leave out of my blog.
Cecilia just wants to please her parents, and to be a big kid like her sister. And although I still fill in most of her word balloons, she’s definitely stringing together two words at a time, and getting pretty good at asking for things by name. Sometimes, though, she asks for things just by pointing and repeating over and over “I do, I do” (“ah-doo, ah-doo”), preemptively answering the question “who wants [whatever she’s pointing at]?” She loves trains, blocks (mostly knocking them over), cheese, and babies, and she gives legitimately the best and most sincere toddler hugs of any kid I’ve ever known.
I remember, when Ellen was about this age, noticing how very quickly she was growing and changing – so quickly, it seemed that every day a brand new, unique Ellen emerged. And I so fiercely loved each of those Ellens that I actually felt a need to mourn the “passing” of every version of my daughter that I encountered. And then I understood how the timeline of motherhood is a series of losses and gains, a pattern of alternating sorrow and celebration, neither of which holds much meaning without its counterpart.
Now, I’m reminded again how quickly it goes, and how thin the line is between the sweet and the bitter. A new Cecilia emerges every day. Each one…irresistible.
