Signs of Spring

On our morning walk on Saturday, I tried to take special notice of the beautiful things. I brought my camera so I could immortalize the spring because it is lovely beyond description. (The pictures embedded in this post are the ones I took.) I wish I could have captured the smells and sounds and breezes too, in a very big, air-tight jar. I wish I could smell them and feel them in the infernal heat of the Texas summer that I know waits for us somewhere in mid-May.

I also wish I could bottle up some of Henry to store like canned peaches. He continues to be intoxicactingly darling and intriguing. Here are a few of my favorite Henry-isms of late. I pull out a new outfit to wear for the day and he stands in the doorway of my closet and tells me, "dat's dahling!" (with a very flippy "L" sound.) He always says it about my brown polka dotted skirt and my cowboy boots. He calls yellow, "leyow." He has recently revealed an intense affection for olives and wants me to "put 'em fingows," (slip his fingers into the holes,) before he eats them. And if he can ever get his sneaky paws on the camera, he squishes it up against his face and tiptoes towards me, telling me to, "My-oh, mama!" (Smile, mama.) If Nate or I sit down on the edge of the bathtub or up on a counter top, he insists on "sit down too, Henwy." He loves to do what we do, eat what we eat, be where we are, say what we say. I know that will quickly change and I want to stash away a jar of his wanna-be-just-like-mom-and-dad phase.

In many ways, I'd be tickled to see Henry grow up to be like Nate and me, (well, more Nate than me.) But I hope he'll be able to resist learning Milli Vanilli dance sequences (as seen on YouTube music videos,) which has been the juvenile obsession of our weekend. It is unquestionably lowbrow art, but wildly entertaining nonetheless. I prefer to think of it as bubble gum for the brain--not beneficial in any way, but mostly harmless (I hope.) I'd even like to have a jar of that nonsense in my imaginary closet of preserved life, because every experience, from the poingnantly profound, to the inanely nonsensical, is a twig in our nest, a stitch in our quilt, a moment that can't be duplicated, that must be deliberately savored as an irreplacable piece of our collective heart.