Loving Charleigh

Today, Charleigh, you turn seven months old.  You outgrew your monkey suit last week.  One day, it zipped easily; the next, it didn't.  I had to rummage through a bin, upstairs, for your sister's raggy, pink bear suit.  I glanced at it, this evening, hanging on a peg by the door, and it looked so long to me.  How have you grown, already, long enough for the bear suit?

You sit, babbling, on my lap even as I type this: "Doy doy da duh ya."  You play with a blue and orange, NUK pacifier: stick it in your mouth, pull it out, pass it from hand to hand, whack my glasses with it.  You drop it, grunt, squeal, whine, arch your back. 

The top of your white and pink, butterfly sleeper is damp from drool.  It's been just over a week since your first tooth (your bottom middle-right) broke through your gums. 

You smell divine.  You grab my face, smile as I kiss your mouth.  I don't want to forget how you look just this instant: still red eyebrows and (very little) red hair, still blue eyes.  Monday, at the park, both a lady we didn't know and the man who walks Jack mentioned your blue eyes, but I see patches of brown in them now; the days of blue are numbered.

I have spoiled you.  I hold you more often than not: choose nursing over feeding from a jar.  Your doctor said a month ago: "Work toward baby food twice a day."  But some days I don't offer baby food at all.  I delay.  You're healthy and thick from my milk, and time passes too quickly. 

You love outside.  You love Daddy, Cade, and Clementine, but--for now--you love me best.  "Mama," you call, when I pass from your sight.  It's the milk.  I delay. 

I nurse while typing; you fall asleep, your head in the crook of my left arm.

I stretch the days best I can, but you outgrow monkey suit; pinch, grasp, and play; babble; teethe; change eye color; call after me.  Too fast.  Too, too fast!

I just want you to have these words, Charleigh, when you're the mama and I'm the nana. 

I want you to read and know: I fought to stretch the days...let the counters grow cluttered and the floor go unmopped...kissed you full on the lips...slept with you tucked in beside...nursed you all day and night so as to delay with the food.  Enjoyed you, loved you.  Wrote you so as to never, for even one second, lose you.