Step Up Yo' Vocab

My baby Welles' vocabulary has increased in leaps and bounds in recent months. I am loving watching him transform from the helpless little baby he was, to the independent toddler he is becoming. This transformation is not always easy, for us or for him, but there is so much love, laughter, and pride involved. For example, when I can't understand what he is trying to say, he will throw down and pitch a fit that would register at least a 3.8 on the Richter Scale - higher than that if he happens to be wearing his hard, white church shoes.

But as he is becoming more verbal, and his words are becoming more intelligible, I am sometimes finding myself wishing that he had come equipped with a mute button. We were sitting in the nursery at church a couple of Sundays ago, (alone thankfully) when he started scratching at one of his mosquito bites. As he was scratching, he looked up at me and just as plain as day, the word "Bitch" flowed out of his sweet little baby mouth. So many thoughts ran through my mind at that moment..."Where did he hear that?? Gotta cancel the HBO subscription! Why is my sweet baby calling me the b word??? How big a sin is it to say the b word at church???"

Well, that night in the bathtub, he did it again. Only this time it was obvious that he was referring to his mosquito bites. So I said, "Welles, do you itch?" And that precious little baby said, "Bitch?" I yelled for his father to come, and proceeded to ask Welles again, and got the same reply. Daddy, of course, thought it was the funniest thing since Eddie Murphy. So now, I'm trying to teach him to remove the b from the itch, and it is no easy task. Guess some folks just don't like words that begin with vowels...and if that is the case, can we please find another consonant???

Holding Hands

I met my very first best friend when I was three years old. We went to the same nursery school together, and through that, our mothers became lifelong best friends. I don't remember the first time we ever held hands, but I do remember much of the childhood that we spent together. We moved down the road from their family when I was in second grade.

By this time, we both had two younger sisters. They were also best friends, and we relished torturing them. I remember bike rides on dirt roads, digging for arrowheads in the field, exploring through the woods, scaring our younger sisters with tales of dead Indians, and playing their Atari 5200. (We only had the 2700).

As we grew older, we retained our friendship. We always knew we were like brother and sister, and a romantic relationship with each other never crossed our minds. I recall a time in high school, when an ex-boyfriend was talking bad about me. My old buddy set him straight. He was the big brother I never had. He was my first best friend; the first boy to ever hold my hand.

My little niece, Grace, held hands with her first boy at the ripe old age of not quite 5 months. She was at her grandfather's wedding, and this boy just reached out and took hold of her delicate little hand. He did it again at a birthday party exactly a week later. He is her cousin, who was born exactly one week before she was.

My hope is that these two cousins share a lifelong close relationship. I hope they ride bikes down dirt roads together; I hope they explore the countryside together; I hope they share the amazement of watching tadpoles turn to frogs; I hope they share a closeness that only exists when you don't remember life without that other person being a part of it.

In twenty-five or thirty years or so, when she decides to marry, I hope to be there. I look forward to watching her share her first dance with her husband, her second dance with her daddy, and I hope she will choose to add a third dance. And I hope that third dance will be with her first best friend, the one with whom she shared all her secrets, this closest of cousins, the first boy to ever hold her hand.