Noticing Moments// To Make You Move

A Study of a Bunker before Bedtime

(Probably February or March 2023)

It’s 6:59pm

My baby is laying on his back, but facing me in the loveseat while I sit on the floor.

He continues to wave his teether at me, and put it near my face so I can perpetually be amazed by his brilliance and manual dexterity. He only pauses to coo at the kitten, who paces and periodically mewls about wanting her kitten food.

 I see her shadow scuttle across the floor. The sky is still a bright baby blue and the tops of barren trees almost purple, pink, and yellow in this light, or at least those are the hues Id use to paint them.

Teddy squeaks at me so I put my face in his belly and tell him, “you get all of my nuzzles—all of them!” This always inspires a laugh, my best audience to date. 

I turn to write this on my phone and he starts struggling in an invisible net, and moaning tragically, until I turn to him and exclaim “Bunker!? (One of our many, but often used nicknames).  And then he laughs again. 

But then he starts fussing, it’s 7:06, near bed time. 

I put him down in front of me between my legs and place the kitten’s ball-in-a-ring toy, which attracts Charlie (our Akita), and Baby Kitten, avid fans of the sport, silently critiquing Bunker on his ball swatting and grabbing techniques.

But even this seems to inspire his ire at this point in the evening. I’m waiting to give a bottle till 7:30 unless his fussing continues…

Which it is.

But now I’ve repositioned him across my knee on his belly so he can now merrily tap the ring as a makeshift percussion instrument

Charlie pants good naturedly as my son ramps up the sadness.

I place him back on the loveseat and he cries inconsolably, my cue that he’s hungry.

He drinks a bottle before I carry him upstairs, put on his overnight diaper to prevent toxic spillage that would put East Palestine Ohio to shame, and ritually put  “one blanket, two blankets, and here’s your otter.” Complete with a kiss, he wiggles and giggles under his blankets and holds his stuffed otter beside him. 

Sound machine is a’soundin’ and we call it a night.

To Make You Move

Right now you are small, though heavy in my arms

I take you to see the window, I carry you around and you direct me with your flailing arms and coos when you see something you love.

You lay on your belly while your peers sit and muse about life on two feet.

If it was a punishment for Satan why is it happening to you?

You are so gentle and precocious and wild 

You get frustrated because you can’t move and I kind of hope it has not yet occurred to you that you’re supposed to. 

Because maybe you’re not supposed to, maybe God made you this way to have a special perspective on the world:

An unusual mind, and a resilient heart