All the small things

A zillion little things make up all that is Life. All we can hope for is that the number of good wonderful small things is greater than the number of bad downright shitty things.

I’ve thought a lot about the small things this week, trying to stick Post-Its to my brain to remember them. Of course I want to remember them years from now, but I also need help remembering them on the days when Downright Shitty seems to be more prominent.

Lately, I’ve noticed:

Eleanor is obsessed with her little pointer fingers. I call them pointer fingers rather than index fingers because she uses them to point – not at things, per se, but … maybe I should call them her pusher or poker fingers. She uses them to poke at screw heads, at buttons she isn’t quite strong enough to fully push, at her bottle nipple while she drinks, at me as she nurses, at the crumb on her tray, at a hand that’s asking for a high five. Those fingers are so tiny, yet they’re so precise.

Toby discovers by licking. If something looks interesting, he sticks out his tongue to test it. He doesn’t extend his tongue and lick with the tip, though, he sticks it out flat – probably for maximum taste-testing. Cabinet? Lick. Floor threshold? Lick. Puppy’s nose? Lick. That’s right, he licked a puppy’s nose. I almost keeled over from copious amounts of swooning.

Callista looks a lot like me. There’s no denying we share DNA, but it shocked the crap out of me to see her suck her thumb just like I did, rub her index finger along her nose, along the eyelashes of her right eye and then grip the satin edge of her blanket with her fingers, rubbing while she sucked. I thought this was a technique of comfort I had mastered on my own. Apparently, it was written into my DNA.

The way Eleanor dances; the way Toby curls into me and wiggles his toes against my legs while he’s breastfeeding; the way Callista spins in circles while she sits – a zillion little things that make up our crazy days, changing day to day, week to week.

How am I going to remember them all?