9:30ish

baby crying. Quite unusual.

As I got closer, I could hear that it wasn't the freaked-out night terror cry. In fact, parenthetically, it's mostly me that's freaked out by night terrors; it weirds me out the way he can wail his ass off and STILL BE COMPLETELY ASLEEP.

When I got to the top of the stairs, he was standing up in the crib. He stopped crying when he saw me, and looked concerned, pointing over at the closet. "Glabble?" he asked, conversationally, with his perfect diction. When I look confused, he starts to cry again, softly, like he's sad.

I go and close all the closet doors, remembering how, as a little girl, I couldn't fall asleep if my closet was open. I rock him, pat him, give him a little bottle (YES, 15 months old and still having bottles, please shut up) and a dry diaper. I've been eating szechuan string beans; he doesn't recoil from my chili-garlic breath.

I hold him some more; he rests his forehead against mine and falls asleep. For the second time today, he sleeps across my chest, shoulder to hip like a bandolier.

He's so big now, so long and heavy. And strong. And he speaks so clearly - not English, you know, but that'll come. I finally got that 6-week tangle out of his hair, there in the back, where his head rests against the car seat. He's been working that dreadlock like a dirty hippie. I keep putting off his first haircut; I just want to get a few more pictures first. And a few more. And then a few more.

You know.