Having a fourteen-month-old is sort of like sharing the apartment with a tiny naked elf who is naked because he twists his way out of your arms during a diaper change. Which isn’t that big of a deal anyway, since all of your diapers are in the washer. Clean, but not dry.
Said elf pees on the floor not infrequently in his hour of nudity and only once on the tile, which is amicable. As is he, until realizing the hunger in his belly and the bore in his head which leads to puchero lips and basset eyes and siren wails and steamboat tugs at the hem of the your shorts.
Having a fourteen-month-old is like hosting a party for a three-foot explorer who has not done his adventurer duty until every cupboard is open and every shelf is cleared just in case there is a fantastic discovery waiting on some little noticed surface where something used to be, but is now on the floor, under the couch where you won’t think to look when you next need it.
It is like waking up from a dream where you were someone who had places to go and things to do and people to meet and minutes to use doing stuff that you thought made you very happy and only now realize that what makes you the most happy is opening your eyes into those eyes and seeing all that you thought you might be becoming all that he might be.
Having a fourteen-month-old is like looking in the mirror and seeing what you must look like often enough for him to put even the eyeshadow fished from the very right drawer in the bathroom up to his ear and say “dada?” with a look on his face that makes you wonder if the shadow is not responding.
It is seeing your belly button discovered from beneath the folds of you shirt several times a day with the same astonishment and amusement as the first time his was discovered underneath his shirt when he was thirteen-months-old.
And then, minutes later, having a fourteen-month-old is like living with a tiny elf who is still naked and still hungry and still bored and at your feet looking up with that fourteen-month-old face telling you all about it in his fourteen-month-old way.
And having a fourteen-month-old will only last as long as having a one, or five, or seven-month-old did. So, we’ll embrace it. Literally. And diaper, feed and play with it. Because we love love love it.
