Time

Shelly's talking - or almost, anyway. She's graduated fom different kinds of cries to different tones and vowel sounds. When she's starting to get hungry she frowns a little, her eyebrows furrow down and she says "oohhhhh oohhhh," gradually getting louder and more insistent if I don't answer quickly enough. Once I pick her up or lay down next to her, she turns her face and whole body towards me. Her eyebrows arch up in anticipation, her frown becomes a little smile and she says "aahhhhh!" She opens her mouth and searches, arches her back and lifts her head.

All of these little things remind me that every day she's growing stronger. But once she starts eating she still makes those little "mmm" sounds, and reaches her arms up and opens and closes her fists and she still reminds me of a helpless kitten. And I'm reminded that in life there's never really a definite end of one time and beginning of the next, its always a forward-moving cycle that slips from one time to the next before we even realized its happened. And when we look back the time has slipped away...