Potholes

This is what ten months old looks like. Cute, right? This was Beckett last Saturday at a restaurant on Newbury Street, where we went with a friend who was in town for the weekend. It was seventy degrees in Boston that day, perfect for eating outside. Because it was the first really warm day since November, this restaurant was packed to the gills for lunch, which also meant that we waited an hour and a half for a table. But you know what? I didn't even notice. Why? Because this baby is so well behaved in restaurants. I'm not bragging, I swear. I'm just thankful that Beckett has become such a sweet, flexible, and not particularly screechy kid (yet! yet! I know). Because you know what else ten months looks like? He's gone from squishy, immobile, rolly-polly baby to a REAL LIVE PERSON! A person who babbles (albeit incoherently) as if he were carrying on a conversation, with actual inflection and pauses for comment. He whines and moans when he doesn't get what he wants, takes delight in things and laughs out loud. He is, in short, a total joy.

And he has quite the busy social life too. Here he is playing with his friend Meredith, who ties for first as the cutest baby born in the middle of May in 2009. She and Beckett had a ball playing with his activity table a couple of weeks ago. They have come a long way from the little lumps Meredith's mom and I took for walks last summer.

I wanted to write a post about the wonderment and gratitude I feel for the incredible people Beckett has encircled around him. We spent a weekend in New York with my childhood friends at the beginning of the month, and had one of those weekends that felt encased by a warm, pink glow. It was the kind of glow that I took into the next week, until Jim found out that he had lost his job. So things have been a little stressful and a little sad in our house, but we're taking the proverbial lemons and making lemonade, or maybe limoncello. That might do a body and mind some good at this particular moment. It will be fine.

And it's hard to feel totally depressed about the uncertainty of the future when you glance out the window of your kitchen and see the tiny purple heads of several dozen croci pushing out from the muck. Despite the fact that it snowed this morning, spring has officially arrived in Boston and that makes everybody feel a little better.

In a fit of frugality, I decided that we are going to grow our own vegetables and herbs this summer. We have a tiny plot of dirt and I think it would be a fun thing for Beckett to taste something that grew right in our backyard. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing since I've never grown anything more substantive than cherry tomatoes and mint, but I'm sure that we'll figure it out, and hopefully save hundreds of dollars on fresh produce this summer. And since Beckett has proved himself to be quite the vegetable lover (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), I think he'll have a ball with it.

Life is far from perfect right now, but we are trying to focus on the parts of it that feel solid and certain: friends, family, our child, the flowers blooming in our backyard, the art on our walls, and the last fires in our beautiful fireplace. Everything will be okay.