Two months later

The dink has been busy. His favorite move, the two-finger point. Or the one-finger point. Or his whole hand splayed open at the end of his extended arm. Does he get it from me, this need to identify each person or object that his eyes focus on? The cuteness is impossible, combined with the inexplicability of why he does such a thing. The other day at the daycare, when I arrived to pick him up, S was rocking him. He was almost asleep, but he heard my voice so she brought him to me. In my arms, he rested his head on my shoulder and looked sweetly at S, then slowly lifted his right arm to her, stretched it in her direction, and pointed with his second and third fingers. She laughed, and I kissed his sweet, fluffy blond head.

In the morning, the dink plays on the floor of our bedroom in his diaper. After his morning poop, he's sanitized with wipes, freshened with a damp cloth, and stripped of his nighttime snuggle suit for a brief 6:30 a.m. period before daddy puts on his "school" clothes. While J struggles to pull the comforting weight of pillows and covers off of his face in bed, and I struggle to zip up my pre-pregnancy pants a mere eleven months later...the dink sits in the doorway to our closet, exchanging between grinning at his reflection in the full-mirror and finding me in the quiet morning chaos, rising up to his red knees (from intense crawling), raising those arms and hands high above his head, and flapping his little hands loosely and excitedly at me. Like he's working out his wrist muscles, or tapping on some tinky piano up in the sky...but I stop what I'm doing, raise my own arms up high, indulge in a bit of panting to mimic him perfectly, and wave back at him. Eventually, the squeals and trills of excitement pull daddy out of the covers. And the dink grins at him from my arms, laughs at daddy's peek-a-boo efforts in the bed, and gives daddy the one-finger salute.