Excuse Me, May I Please Hold Your Baby?

 Argh! He's not even a baby anymore. He's full on toddlin'. He's a toddler! The other night, during our bed-time ritual, I got him in his jammies, activated the mood-lighting, switched on his humidifier, gathered him up in my arms and fed him his bottle. Singing to him, as I usually would, "Wanna Be Like You" from the Jungle Book, or Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours", and kissing his warm little forehead between verses; tonight I intended to continue holding him as he drifted off to sleep. It had been a while since we did that and I wanted to treat us both. Yet, Clark had another idea. After finishing his bottle, he pointed to his crib and said "Night night." A not so subtle indication that a horizontal position, comfy on his pillow is where he wanted to be. And...

"CRITCH"

 Though I couldn't hear it, I'm pretty sure at that moment, a hairline-crack opened just above the top-left portion of my heart. Yeah, the time for passing out on Daddy's chest is now slowly coming to an end. Unless I spike his milk with Benadryl. (NOTE to Activists: Just a joke. Jeeze) My little man is turning into, well, a little man!

As annoying as it was for near EVERY person we came across who told us to "savor every moment, cuz it goes by so fast", it's true. Man, it's true. Though I'm pretty sure if I savored even more than I already do, we might get conjoined. I mean, he might as well be behind a glass, with me staring, fixated with a pad and pen recording his every nuance. I mean I think I did that one day just for fun, but seriously folks, we ARE savoring!

Yet in a way, it kinda makes it hurt more. When he wakes up from a nap and appears significantly longer. When he busts out words like "yellow". When with just a look from one of us, he recognizes that he shouldn't play with that glass jar, instead, knowingly putting it (carefully) back on the shelf where he got it from. Arrgh I say! Perhaps as we're savoring we're subliminally trying to create a suspension of time.

He's just so fuckin' cute! So smart! So mature (well, you know what I mean). Am I biased? Absofuckinlutely. But I'm not waxing here either. We have a true gem on our hands. During our annual Pumpkin Carving Jello Shot Party (which we appropriately changed to Pumpkin Pot-Luck for obvious reasons), Clark totally worked the room as a little host should. He socialized, played, ate, charmed, and nuzzled with everyone. And towards the end, Christy and I discovered him crawling up the stairs and with a wave announced "Night night". The dude was putting himself to bed! Christy and I looked at each other, stunned. We gathered his bottle and jammies, excused ourselves from the party, and up we went.

It's been nearly 21 months since his rocket like emergence into our world and we're, on a daily basis, rendered emotional from SOMEthing, some look, some antic that he creates for us.

Yeah, man. We're totally in savor. We're also completely in love and in awe!