Feet

I am sure when Jory was a newborn I smelled and kissed his little tiny feet after he screamed his way through bath time those first few weeks. Before I put socks on them, I would kiss them, play "This Little Piggy" with them. They were cute adorable little feet. But when they kick me in the back or appear on the top of my stomach as I sleep, they aren't so adorable anymore.

It's not that they aren't cute, but they are just big. His feet are getting longer, his toes longer. He's almost at a size 12. What happened to the feet that weren't touching the top of his newborn footie pants? They are morphing into boy feet from the cute little baby feet I use to kiss.

It's not just that his feet are getting big, but what that represents.

"Mommy, I need a haircut because my hair bothers me when it grows."

Where did this line of conversation come from? What prompted a haircut discussion? He's never talked about or requested a haircut before. Though I agree with him, he's desperately in need of a haircut. We shouldn't have to brush his hair in the mornings. I had a whole year of that with him and that was more than enough.

"I feel like taking scissors to it and cutting it."

"You do not touch any scissors," I said authoritatively, as I only half-listened to my conference call.

"Mommy, I'm not- -"

"You do not pick up or touch scissors, is that understood?" Flashes of my babies' hair cut circle my mind.

"Yes, Mommy. I wasn't going to cut my hair with scissors I was saying I felt like doing it."

See this is what the feet growth represents having conversations with me that's he's never had before, putting things together like he never has before. It's the loss of innocence.

"Oma, why is that man sleeping in front of the building? Is it because he forgot his address?"

His Oma answered, "Yes."

One day homelessness can't be explained as simply as a man forgetting his address. I want him to stay in his pre-apple eating days in the Garden of Eden, but alas it is not possible. Plus let's be honest, if he was in his pre-apple eating days I wouldn't hear myself saying, "Jory, stop that." "Put that down." "What are you doing?" "Are you listening?" But in the world where my baby is a perfect angel, it saddens me that he is on his way to seeing the non-Eden world. Darn that Adam and Eve and growing feet!