Twice tonight Elisabeth stood up, from the floor, and then took two steps, before falling back down. How fun to watch her learn to walk!
Through the past year, her face has changed so much. It’s hard to remember the little baby she once was, who we brought home from the hospital, barely big enough for the infant car seat. Elisabeth’s growing through her clothes too, and I need to go searching for more warm-weather outfits for her now that the weather is colder: when she sits, her long legs dangle out of her pants. I still call her “baby”, maybe because she is the youngest of three, although in many ways she is growing up, becoming a toddler. She can feed herself and much of the time, using hand signs and sounds, she can ask for what she wants. She’s certainly not a little newborn baby.
Tonight, while Ted was drying her after her bath, perhaps it was only the angle where I was sitting out in the hall, the way I was watching, but I seemed to catch a glimpse of her face that reminded me of newborn baby Elisabeth. As she turned her head toward me, I saw her eyes big and brown and her face seemed small and pink. For a moment I remembered when she was just a wee one, a baby with large dark eyes, a mouth to suck and cry, the rest of her wrapped up in a blanket, cuddled in one arm, fragile and new. Only one year ago, yet it seems as if it were many years ago in my memory.
Two steps forward. One glimpse back.
