Rambling Sunday Morning.

I put a crockpot together this morning, chopped vegetables — carrots, potatoes, sweet potato, bell pepper, kidney beans, butternut squash and cubed beef. My baby crawled from the kitchen to the back yard screen door, back to the kitchen again, squealing and laughing.

Then he crawled over to my leg and pulled himself to a standing position, reaching up to be picked up. I put my knife down and lifted him up and was rewarded by him looping his arm around my neck and he leaned his head against my shoulder. For two seconds. Then he spotted the crockpot and all the different colors in there, the orange of the carrots, the yellow of the squash, the red of the kidney beans and beef, and he leaned out with his hand outstretched in curiosity. I tickled him under his arm to distract him and he giggled and wanted down.

He discovered his Book Nook in his room this morning. It’s behind his door and he rarely ventures there because if he’s awake, his bedroom door is open so he doesn’t see it. But this morning, he crawled in there to hang out with me, because I was sorting through the bottom drawer of his dresser. Then he crawled over to the door and shut it and realized there’s an entire unexplored corner there… it was so cute to see him pull a book down and look at it. He loves books and that makes his book reading mommy very happy.

I worked on his baby book yesterday and realized with a pang that an entire page of “firsts” in that book is now completed.

He put himself to sleep yesterday on his father’s shoulder and this morning, he nursed for his morning meal and usually goes to sleep when nursing, but he didn’t this morning. I put him in his crib and he rolled around for about 30 minutes and finally, just a few minutes ago, went to sleep.

He has his front four teeth now and his father and I marvel how those teeth know when to grow and in what order, like a white picket fence that self erects, and it is typically the same for all babies.

And now, it’s anticipated to be over 100° again today and I run my air conditioner and dread watching the electric bill go up and up… the kind of heat that when it gets cold outside, I’ll think back to today as I pull out from the freezer the beef stew I will freeze tomorrow and it will seem as if I created the memory of this kind of heat from an overactive imagination, and the laugh of a crawling baby… well, he’ll probably be running by then. But hopefully still laughing and squealing!