ailatan's photostream  

I know how this social networking business works, and I know I ought to be reciprocating all those stars and comments I'm hoping to see now that I'm actually posting again, but free time is pretty scarce these toy-filled days, and, anyway–I'm hoping–who wouldn't want to add a comment or a star to this super-cute picture of a big baby driving a tractor?

Don't be fooled by the serious look in his eye: this may have been the most fun he's ever had.

And he can't stop talking about it. Or about feeding the cows. And about crocodile teeth. And the moon.

Part of a recently named series called a mom and a son.

Now that we're beginning to communicate with words, we can finally have a conversation about the importance of posting more pictures... if indeed we decide it's important.

Part of a recently named series called a mom and a son.

In just three [amazingly long, impossibly fast] days my son will turn one, possibly while climbing a bookshelf.

[It might as well be said that said bookshelf will be in Warsaw, in what until recently felt like an outgrown former apartment, but has instead become a beloved first family home.]

Independence comes incrementally, each new skill arriving suddenly, unexpectedly. Most stunning is the ease with which the new becomes familiar; what is hardest of all to grasp is how irretrievable the memories become from before some new something was possible.

[Not so with what could have been between me and my boy's Danish dad: those memories of former flash-forwards torment even as the present takes its own... yes, independent shape.]

At nine months and ten kilos, Anker is swift and fearless, already standing unassisted and climbing onto furniture and opening snap-top bottles with his teeth. He even reacts to the Polish for "no"... with a disarming grin.

[His mom keeps imagining she's about to start uploading lots more, lots more frequently, but there's the problem of getting a shot that's actually in focus, and the more significant problem of knowing what to say when what is there to say is not yet ready to be told.]