b.rox

Dear Persephone,
You’re twenty-two months old as of yesterday. Not long ago I had a fleeting vision of what you might be like when you are twenty-two years old. We were napping together and it came in a dream as I was half-asleep, so vivid and so real and so beautiful. I woke up and was [...]

Dear Persephone,
A lot has sure happened in the last month. Most notably, perhaps, we moved to a new house.
I know moving can be especially tough for kids, but I think you’re still young enough that this didn’t really disturb you at all. You seemed to just accept it. As far as we can tell you’re [...]

Dear Persephone,
You are twenty months old today, and growing fast. One day recently I picked you up from daycare and I swear I could tell you’d grown substantially since that morning.

You’re growing in other ways as well. You stacked nine blocks into a tower. That may seem like a small feat, but it wasn’t too [...]

Dear Persephone,
Since I see you every day I sometimes don’t notice the incremental changes. You still just look so tiny to me, and even after carrying you for blocks, you still seem so light. But I know you’re growing, because you can now open the top drawers in the kitchen, which you couldn’t do a [...]

Dear Persephone,
It’s your half-birthday today. You’re one and a half years old.
Sometime over the past month you made a big transition. You went from hating hats to loving them. A month ago you wouldn’t tolerate a hat on your head. Now you wear a hat most of your waking hours.
Your vocabulary continues to grow. Here’s [...]

Dear Persephone,
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Of course I have to add a few hundred words of my own.
You’ve been growing so fast that sometimes it seems like one can see changes on an hourly basis. I don’t mean physical growth — you’re still tiny, only around 21 lbs. — but rather your mental [...]

Dear Persephone,
I mentioned it last month, but since then your nascent love of books has exploded into an all-out obsession. You will sometimes go into your room and close the door behind you; we find you sitting by the bookshelf, going through your books one by one. You love to have books read to you, [...]

Dear Persephone,
You are starting to say a few words. Your pronunciation is pretty crude, but your points of reference are undeniable: Bird. Ball. That’s pretty cool.
Yesterday we were running so late in the morning that I rode my bike to daycare with you strapped to my chest (instead of dropping you off and doubling back [...]

Dear Persephone,
You’re walking better than ever, though you still have plenty of spills, including a tumble down the stairs that really scared us. You were frightened too, but you weren’t hurt, and a shortly thereafter you forgot all about it. You’re still not scared of the stairs — or anything else, for that matter, which [...]

Dear Persephone,
You might have thought I was going to stop with these monthly letters once you made your first birthday, but I’m going to keep going. I’m not sure how long I’ll continue. Your first hundred months might be a better target. But who knows? I’m winging it.
When I look back to my very first [...]

It’s amazing to think you’re one year old today.
What strikes me the most is how much you’ve learned, and how little we’ve taught you. Over the past year, your first year, you’ve learned to crawl and stand on your own. You’ve learned to laugh and cry. You’ve learned to point and wave. You’ve figured out [...]

You make eleven months today. I just made 42 years myself. Such a difference. Every month is a milestone for you, but I can’t even get excited about my annual birthday anymore.
Still I try to cherish each day. I’m well aware of the fragility of life. An old friend’s father just died in a house [...]

You started crawling in earnest right after you made nine months. Now it’s hard to remember when you weren’t mobile.
Of course you’ve been getting into all kinds of trouble — mostly falling over and bumping your head. You’ve started grabbing hold of things to haul yourself up into a standing position, but your balance isn’t [...]

It’s been nine months since you were born. That means you’ve been out here in the world roughly the same length of time you were in your mother’s womb. So how do you like it? Which milieu do you prefer? Hopefully you’re enjoying yourself out here because, after all, there’s no going back.
My new phone [...]

What a month it’s been. You came down with your first bug a few weeks ago; you’ve still got a cough and a runny nose, but the doctor says that’s not unusual.
You’ve got four teeth now, with a fifth one coming in, and they are sharp. This morning you were nursing at your mother’s breast [...]

You’re seven months old today. I’d heard the first three months, or the first six, might be the hardest, but as I’ve mentioned before you’ve been remarkably easy so far. This last month, your seventh, has been the hardest by far. You’ve been crankier than ever. The reason: Apparently you don’t like the feeling of [...]

You’re six months old today. That’s half a year. As for me, I just calculated that I am now 500 months old. That’s half a lifetime. It’s a well-known fact that time flows more quickly as you get older. These six months have probably seemed like an eternity to you, but I could stand [...]

You don’t cry much, but you’ve been grunting and making a lot of other noises, pretty much since the day you were born. Over the last month you’ve been gurgling and cooing more. Then, a couple weeks ago, you went swimming with Sebastian, who’s two years old, and he taught you the joy of squealing. [...]

You are starting to reach out and grab things. It’s not quite coordinated or entirely voluntary. But a couple weeks ago you stretched out your arm, and your tiny hand hit my face. You laughed, and then you did it again. And again. About ten times in a row. That was cool.
I took three months [...]

Persephone, I imagine some day you’ll be asking about your name. You’re only three months old now, so obviously it’s not exactly on your mind right now. But some day you’ll realize this name is at least a little unusual, not to mention confusing to some people, and you’ll wonder why we named you this. [...]