Tag: zooey update

  • Zooey update: seven years

    Zooey update: seven years

    The highlight of my last year with you is watching you take what you want and leave behind what you don’t. That’s not to be taken for granted with everything that comes with starting school, developing new friends, navigating new skills, and of course… being the youngest of four. The highlight of my highlight was…

  • Zooey update: six years

    Zooey update: six years

    I’ve spent six years looking at your pretty face, and marveling that there is nothing at all physically resembling mine – you’re a carbon copy, visually, of your dad. Well, there’s one thing – your freckles. We share that. But what I’ve spent the last year realizing is you have something else we share. Or…

  • Zooey update: five years

    Zooey update: five years

    My youngest turns five today. Zooey, we’re full-on into that tug-o-war over getting bigger and staying baby… It’s not even day on, day off; it’s sometimes in five minute intervals. But I don’t begrudge you that; it’s been a year of fading boundaries, loose definitions, lost assumptions. Out of everyone, this year might have done…

  • Zooey update: four years

    Zooey update: four years

    You might think, Zooey, that as the fourth or last to do something, it would be less exciting. We’ve seen the others take steps, we’ve seen the others ride bikes, we’ve seen the others draw a face for the first time. But that’s not what makes you, or any of you, special or interesting; the…

  • Zooey update: Three years

    Zooey update: Three years

    Three is crossing the sometimes thin line between ‘noket’ and kid… There are things about you that go beyond age.

  • Zooey update: Two years

    Zooey update: Two years

    You’ve been watching us for two years, and now you’re coming out… lessons in dolls, headbands, jewelry… lessons in ‘enough!’ and hitting back… lessons in climbing to the top bunk… lessons in dogs and cats and preemptive barking… lessons in wanting to do it all, by yourself… and teaching us to never underestimate you, and…

  • Zooey update: twenty three months

    There’s that point after the baby turns into a toddler and the toddler gets even a bit more toddlery that they are so delicious you could just eat them. And even if I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of what is bothering you yet… I feel tension in you, Zooey… so while I’m busy…

  • Zooey update: twenty two months

    You give kisses now! I love that! The little pwaa! of your tiny lips. Especially when the aim is off. You’re still sparse on words – what do you wanna say, Zooey? You can tell me… or Big Bird, we’re into Sesame Street now… I mean, I love the faces you make – you’re speaking with…

  • Zooey update: twenty one months

    You’re just one of the girls, Zooey. You’re thing now is part de-planed flight attendant, part big kid going to school – rolling around Nettles’ backpack (especially convenient because she doesn’t want to, and, um, between us – you’re being kinda used… but there’s time to work that out…). You pick it up in the…

  • Zooey update: twenty months

    Fire and doughnuts. What more do you need? You really love Chanukah. At first you were all, huh? What? I’m supposed to eat this? Naaah. Really? Just eat it? This? Uh… I guess…  Oooooh, I get it.   And you wanted so badly to light the candles yourself… which, you know, you nearly did, as much…

  • Zooey update: nineteen months

    Monkey see, monkey do, Zooey is watching and something is hatching… there are so many ways to learn and yours is a given – three big siblings to watch, to eyeball, to scrutinize, and decide whether you want to try it yourself. It’s your way.

  • The last week.

    This isn’t how I thought it would end. I didn’t think the end would begin with a deep soreness, tiny stabs of pain, highlighted by stinging tears; the added torture of me trying to hold all this in and stay strong for you, to avoid the chance you’d feel unwhole, to acknowledge your instinctual longing,…