There have been so many new developments in the last couple weeks that I can’t even remember all of them!  I had my first proud mommy moment at daycare.  Charlie goes to a very small daycare center that we picked precisely because it is intimate and friendly.  We feel really lucky to have found this place as it is quite special.  They have an annual end-of-summer party where they “graduate” the children who are going off to kindergarten and present an award to every single child in the center.  Charlie was awarded “Most Independent While Playing.”  I joked that my child was starting early with the anti-social behavior but the director said that wasn’t what the award meant at all.  She said most babies don’t like to be left alone to play at this age, but Charlie is happy to have a toy in his hand if the teacher has to turn her immediate attention to the child next to him.  Anyway, it was his first certificate so it will be up on the fridge for a while and then be saved for all of eternity.

Charlie took his first spin in an exersaucer about two weeks ago.  The first time was rough as he struggled to steady himself on his feet and grab the toys.  He was still a bit too small for the seat, but a rolled up towel behind him helped and we are amazed at how quickly he has gained strength and agility.  Now, he spins himself around to get to other toys and has even figured out how to manipulate some of them to make noise or move.

This weekend was Charlie’s first taste of rice cereal.  We knew to expect that he’d push most of it out of his mouth, but we were pleasantly surprised by the amount that actually stayed in there.  At first, he made an extremely unhappy face when the spoon was placed in his mouth, but sometime during the second day’s feeding he started to realize that the spoon was delivering the tasty mush mixed with breast milk and he started sucking on it to get the cereal off.  It’s an incredibly slow process that takes tons of patience (not my strong suit), but faces like this one made the entire thing much easier:

No teeth yet, but still lots of drool and chomping down on any toy (or hand) that happens to be nearby.  Thank goodness for Sophie the Giraffe!  He is babbling and squealing a ton these days.  Both the daycare director and I have noticed that, at times, he watches our mouths as we talk to him.  She says it’s a definite sign of language development.  My son, an early talker?  Wouldn’t be a surprise considering what a motor mouth I am.

As we head into this week leading up to the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, I’m thankful that I have Charlie’s constant antics to keep my spirits up.  On September 11, 2001, I had been a New York City resident for exactly 10 days even though I grew up outside the city and had worked in midtown Manhattan for two years before moving in.  I was just two weeks into my first semester of law school and I sat in the school’s basement computer lab when the first plane hit.  Our computer screens blipped off and back on, but no one seemed concerned.  I went upstairs to my legal writing class and we did our best to concentrate as sirens blared constantly for nearly an hour before we were evacuated.  I later learned that those sirens were every police car and fire engine in Brooklyn heading over the bridge to the scene.  We were told to go home but weren’t told why.  I could see the towers smoking from our classroom and as I ran down Atlantic Avenue to my apartment, I got coated in debris that was drifting through the winds that always cross the East River on nice Fall days.  It wasn’t until I got home and saw my roommate’s expression as he stared at the TV that I realized something was very wrong.  I turned towards it just in time to see the first tower fall.  And then I fell.

The days after that were a blur of military presence, waiting to hear the fate of people I knew, and the smell.  Oh, the smell.  It’s the one thing I can recall almost instantly whenever I remember that day.  It took a couple weeks for me to work up the courage to go to Ground Zero.  The now iconic chunk of facade was still sticking out of the ground, searches of the rubble were ongoing; most of us just went to be around other city dwellers who needed a good cry.  In those first few weeks, New York was so quiet, so empty, so…sad.  When I remember it, I try so hard to remember the goodness that it brought out in all of us who had become so used to ignoring each other.  My thoughts go out to all who lost someone they cared about in the events of 9/11 and I hope that this anniversary brings you some peace.