*kendraspondence*

I passed the following note to my classmate last night:

Dear Nemat, I’m sorry you have to sit next to me tonight. I haven’t showered today.

I punctuated it with a frown face. He took his pen and turned it into a smiling face.

***

We assessed Baby Girl’s hesitation to walk as part psychological and part efficiency. She does not want to let go of our finger when doing her walk (which, by the way, is very stiff and slow and she looks like she is a character on stilts in a parade). She obviously wants and deeply needs to get to that tube of Nystatin ointment faster than the speed of light in order to shove it down her throat, and crawling totally beats walking with a stick, yo.

So we tried on some heavy Big Girl shoes in the hopes that she’d be striding right.

This is how thrilled she was with the big kicks:

The first few times we put them on her, her face warped into the angry mushroom head, ahh those srunched up eyes, that quivering lower lip, the anguish of those round, red little cheeks. She looked at us as if to say, Why must you wrestle my innocence right out of my little chubby digits? Why must you replace it with the cruel reality of girlhood? I said I WASN’T READY.

But the next day she accepted her fate as a member of the hard-soled shoe rocking club…

…and she has already found a pair that she fancies.

Baby Cons as purchased by Lovey Loverpants before we had even met Baby Girl.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the bathroom having an intervention appointment with Mary Kay who was working her magic on me with a little thing called showing free radicals who’s boss microdermabrasion, and busy though I was with the pink lady products [which you can purchase and have shipped to you for free through my website linked above under the "mary kay" tab, not that I am plugging shamelessly or anything, not that I want a Pink Cadillac today or anything], I suddenly heard a loud THUD and I was sure Baby Girl was taking her first Danger Mouse geronomooooo out of her crib. But I came out of the bathroom to near no crying, to see Lovey sitting on the exerball just casually thinking maybe the sound came from the stairwell that leads to the other units in our building. But further inspection suggested that perhaps it came from outside. Still, we had no leads.

When I was gone to the funeral last week, Lovey called me and said, “Hey, remember that loud THUD the other night? Well, I found scraps of a coconut in the wreath on the front door.”

I will not even begin to explore who purposefully carried a coconut in the mid-February freeze to play darts at my stoop.

So a word from the ‘hood. Beware of coconut cannonballs aiming for the target of the festive wreath on your front door. We just can’t be too careful about the hazards of tropical fruit.

Hi Loveys,

Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and prayers over the past week. The grief was almost crippling at times, we loved my uncle so very much and are going to miss him so terribly, but the blessing of my close-knit family and the support from friends helped me to walk, helped me to hold up my head and smile for my Baby Girl, helped me to share memories and give comfort to my young cousins who will only have vague remembrances of our uncle and of his death. Your support truly does mean so much.

The presence of Baby Girl for all of the services was definitely a boon to all of our spirits, though. When Nana Red picked us up at the airport, she looked at Baby Girl and said, “You’re the only good thing to come out of this.” A visit from her granddaughter was indeed enough to comfort her this week, and I’m so grateful that God made it possible for us.

Not to dwell too much on my own experience in light of my cousin’s and auntie’s loss, but I truly saw the hand of God moving this past week. For example, we had to book a flight home within one day. We also needed a flight with a stopover because anything more than 2 hours on a plane brings out the baby beast in my daughter. Every flight we saw was over $800. Yet, there were only a few seats left on a USAirways flight for the perfect times on the perfect days with a stopover — for $200. Amazing. Additionally, since “business has been kind of slow” for Loverpants, I was hesitant as I went to Tarjay the other day. Baby Girl needed a couple of outfits for the funeral, etc. since she had nothing that fit her and that was nice. I remembered that friends had given us a gift certificate but I didn’t know the amount. Needless to say, I was blown away by their generosity as I stood at the cash register and saw our bill cut down to 25% of the total. I felt so cared for this past week, and have emerged with a heart that still grieves but gives thanks for all of the blessings, some hidden, some undeniably prominent. Thank you.

***

That little face. [One of] The only good thing[s] to come out of this.

My family was dealt a very grievous loss earlier this week. A beloved uncle of mine passed away, and we all have very heavy hearts right now. My uncle leaves behind a wife and three sons in their early twenties. Thank you in the meantime for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Baby Girl is writing a new chapter in her second year of life. The words are “Daddy” and “Bopple” repeated over and over, and they, along with screeches and rejected scraps of food and scrunched up faces, form long sentences that stretch for whole afternoons. The sentences are punctuated with sweet moments. The sweet moments are the commas, semi-colons, exclamation marks.

I realize that in every great book, though, there are difficult chapters to read. There are chapters that make us feel uncomfortable and on edge but we know we have to get through them, we’re bracing ourselves to read faster so that we can get through them to the part where all is resolved or the denouement casts light on what was murky for so long. Both Lovey Loverpants and I are trying to get through this chapter and are trying not to rush ourselves through it, but it is a rocky one that we are reading and writing right along with Baby Girl.

A friend asked me recently if I still felt exhausted and I said that the physical exhaustion has given way to an emotional exhaustion. Sometimes, when it’s clear that both the girl and I have just grown bored of one another and we are biding our time until Daddy gets home, I just kind of want to sit back and read a book or watch “Oprah” or give myself a manicure. But I don’t. I sit and nod for the eleventieth time that yes, that is a bottle of lotion, and yes, let’s read Gossie and Friends just to see if they still find Oliver at the end SPOILERS, and just as the blood vessel behind my left eye is just about to pop from the tedium, Daddy gets home or saves the day, or Little Miss Sunshine emerges with a gratuitous hug for her mother, along with a sloppy licky-kiss and a pinch of my earlobe and I know that I must have just been stuck on a paragraph; I just needed to turn the page was all.

***