This weekend we visited family down in Montana, and on our drive home through the Rocky Mountains I grew pensive. Long mountain drives often have that effect on me.
I looked out the window at the greenness of it all, and thought back on what a pleasant weekend it’d been. Then my thoughts drifted to all the other similar weekends and day trips we’ve taken to that same area over the years, and how times have changed so much since my very first Montana trip ten years ago. Of course eventually I became a little sad, thinking about how fast the years fly and how soon all that green will turn to brown and then white, as winter descends upon us once again.
And with that, I couldn’t help but recall the words of that great Robert Frost poem I learned back in junior high, the one I loved so much that it was, in fact, the *only* poem I ever loved for many years (I went through a years-long phase of hating poetry):
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf
As Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
I recited it over and over to myself as we carried on through the mountains. It was the only soundtrack to our trip for many miles, with Hutch sleeping quietly in the back seat and Kyle focusing on passing every vehicle in front of us whenever the lines were dotted.
Before long, though, Hutch stirred from his nap and started adding his thoughts to my own—at this point in his little life he basically says everything that comes to mind, very stream-of-consciousness style, which this afternoon was…
“Choo choo train! Hi train! Chugga chugga CHOO CHOO! One, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine, TEN! GOOD JOB, HUTCHY! Tunnel…train…see ya soon train! Bye bye, train; see ya soon! More train? More train? MORE TRAIN! Want treat? Want treat? WANT TREAT! Soo-soo off? [That means he took his pacifier out.] Soo-soo on? Want water? Want water? WANT WATER! Go see Papa? Go see Gaga? Go see Dell-dell? Go see Preston, go see Ben, go see Abby? Go see Auntie Maymie? Go see Ady? Go see Cece? GO SEE CECE! Want Mommy’s green ice cream cone, okay? Okay.”
And so on, carried my little postmodernist toddler.
As he narrated the last leg of our journey, his thoughts mingled with my own to create a strange blend of pleasant sadness. I commented to Kyle how two years ago at exactly that time I had just gotten my epidural, and he said: It seems like ten.
And he’s right. People sometimes ask me if I can even remember what life was like before having Hutch, and I always respond the same:
Yes, of course. It was lovely. We had leisure time, extra money, and very relaxing restaurant experiences. We slept in on weekends, grocery shopped on our own schedules, packed for trips with relative ease. Life before Hutch was not always easy, but it was certainly easier.
Yet even though I remember those days, they seem hazy and very far-distant, almost like they are another person’s memories altogether, and that perhaps I only dreamed they were mine.
Because even though it’s only been two years…it’s been two years. Two short years, yes, but 730 very long days (probably 720 of which have begun with 6 hours of sleep). Sometimes I can’t believe he’s only been with us for two years, and other days I can’t believe we’ve kept him alive for two whole years.
Hutch is a bundle of energy. He loves to be outside, especially when it involves riding “side bike.” (The name an evolution of his constant begging for “Outside? Bike?”) His latest hobby is to wake up and find me, either in bed next to him or in my own bed the next room over, press his face right up to mine and chirp, “Hello, Mom! Good morning! Wake UP!” He’s a morning person I’m afraid.
He loves hugs and kisses and says so. Seriously. I’ll give him a hug and he’ll say, “I…love…HUGS!” He loves them so much he’ll often just ask for one: “Hugs? Mama? Okay.”
He knows when he’s about to poo, and sometimes hides or shoos me away so he can do his biness in private. We’ve courted the potty here and there, but usually he doesn’t want much to do with it. I don’t want to push him and wreck any chances of potty training soon, but I also don’t want to be changing two sets of diapers come November 14th.
He’s a large child. The last time he had a doctor’s appointment he was in the 100+ percentile for height and weight combined. He’s the same size (or taller) than some of my friends’ three year-olds. His daycare (“school,” to Hutchy) almost didn’t believe me when I brought him in the first time. Oh, he’s in the three year-old class? No…he’s 22 months.
He hates being left alone for any length of time, either to sleep, eat, watch cartoons, or wait in the truck while I run back inside because I forgot something. He always screams. It’s one of the few things that *does* make him scream, in fact. When he wants me to come with him somewhere, he grabs my hand and says, “I come for you? I come for you!” It means, “Will you come with me?”
He understands instructions, from “Wipe your hands with this towel,” to “Throw this in the trash,” and “Your soo-soo is in the chair next to you.” He appears to love “the baby in mommy’s tummy” already, giving it kisses daily, although he might just think that the baby is my belly button. (He loves belly buttons.)
I read an article about how to help prevent your child from being sexually abused, and the main thing it said was to teach them the anatomically correct names for their privates—something about if we give it a name it’s suddenly not mysterious or secretive anymore. This was very uncomfortable for me as I was raised quite differently, but in an effort to be the best parent I can be, I taught Hutch the right name during bath time one night. He loved the word instantly, and makes Kyle very uneasy now during diaper changes when he talks about his “PENIS!” (Kyle is still not convinced this was the best route to go, parenting-wise, but as I’m the only parent who reads any sort of articles on the subject, I maintain it was my right to drop that bombshell. At any rate, the damage is done. That’s a word you don’t just un-learn, apparently.)
He counts to ten very well except he consistently leaves out five, and even when we stop him after four to interject “FIVE!” he takes that as his cue to continue on to six, thus skipping five either way. We suspect he actually just hates the number five.
After ten he’s a little shaky, but he usually nails eleven, twelve, and then a couple of the teens, followed by “twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-FOUR! GOOD JOB, HUTCHY!”
He loves to tell himself good job.
His funniest complete sentences of the past few weeks have been:
“Where’s the park? I don’t know!”
“What’s Daddy doing?”
“I need fan on! I need light off!” It cracks me up that he can identify needs versus wants, and specifies which it is for any given situation.
He’s a mellow child, and as long as he’s gotten enough sleep he’s pretty adaptable to his surroundings.
He’s the love of my life.
Can I remember what life was like before Hutch was in it?
Yes…but I don’t want to.
Stay gold, Ponyboy.
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