divine

Eliana is so ready to turn one. She's doing all of these toddler-like things. Like for months I've been signing the word, "more" for her, hoping to get her to respond. I was pretty certain she had no idea what in god's good name I was doing when I vigorously pressed my fingers together and said, "more, more" like a total freakazoid. But just the other day she started signing "more" just out of the blue. Joellen said something like, "Wow, Gil. You already taught her the sign for more." Not realizing that I had taught her anything I replied, "I've been doing the sign at her for months...uh, I guess she picked it up."

Now we're up and running. I can ask her, "Eliana, do you want more beans?" and she looks at me and makes the sign for more and smiles in anticipation. It's kind of like on Pee Wee's Playhouse. There was always a word of the day and whenever someone said the word, everyone in the playhouse just freaked out. That's kinda what she does whenever I say, "more." Today we pushed her wagon all the way to school. Then she practiced up and down the hallways and she showed off her skills for all her favorite ladies at MIS. When she decided to take a break and do some discovery crawling, all I had to do was say, "Eliana, do you want to do some more walking?" She looked up at me, made the sign for more, and then motored back over to her wagon, stood up, and headed off down the hallway. Remarkable. The bells and whistles are exploding in my brain.

I get such a kick out of seeing her upright. It still looks so odd to me, the way she still doesn't really know how to bend her knees, the way she walks "peg leg joe style" like her legs are made of lead or something. The sun was so bright today, and I was sort of spacing out as I spotted her maneuvering down our street. For a second her walking felt like some sort of freaky hallucination, bringing me back, however briefly, to some really fun times on the beach in Santa Cruz, circa 1995. Is this really that tiny, helpless thing that I brought into the world almost a year ago? This beautiful little girl with her big personality, tenacious approach to new things, love of good music and exciting food, wonderful, unique sense of humor? This grubby little girl whose knees hit the sidewalk so many times today, yet she continued without a complaint, determined to battle on.

Sometimes it just feels so wild. Like there's way too much love in one moment for any human to possibly handle. Like I just want to open my arms and embrace whatever power brought this little dynamo into my world, whoever deemed me worthy of this sort of grace.