10 Things I Love About Trombone

I abandoned the weekly letter thing to Trombone a long time ago. Was it week 22 or something? I think I gave it up because I was lazy but in the past year, I have noticed it has been more difficult to exalt new developments in Trombone’s life. With every great development in life – for everyone, me included – comes a stage of pain-in-the-assness and where I’m at, my eyes are trained on minimizing the pain-in-the-assness rather than maximizing the incredible developments that emerge once the pain-in-the-assness is done.

When he was a baby, he developed skills like any baby. Rolling over! Sitting up! Talking! But since he turned (er, let’s fudge and say) 2 years old he’s been developing his personality, his *self* as well as his gross and small motor skills. That is the interesting part, the becoming a person part, the figuring out who he is part. But it is much harder to capture because it’s subtle and slow and when I stop to think about it, well, when *wasn’t* he the person he is now?

Three years ago right now I was starting to contract, watching Working Girl on the hospital TV, too nervous to finish my hospital meatloaf. It had been a sunny, warm day, much like today. Unlike today, I had nothing to do all day but stare at my huge belly and wish for it to pop out a baby.

Here are 10 things I love about Trombone, who turns 3! years! old! tomorrow.

1. He loves to pretend. We pretend to be animals, people other than ourselves, such as the little girl down the road that he loves a lot and very often we pretend to be restaurant owners and their customers. We sometimes travel to London by train, where we buy things like cookies and eye drops and chocolate.

2. He always says good morning to the people we pass on the street.

3. His contrary, independent spirit, which is still, for the most part, tempered by politeness.

The kid has been so polite and good natured that I am still guilty of saying, “Would you like to come and do this thing right now?” expecting obedience and then am surprised when he considers my request carefully and then says, “No thank you Mummy, I don’t think I would.”

Um. OK. Let me rephrase.

I don’t love this characteristic on a daily (or hourly) basis, but I love the mind spasms that go along with it. The sheer thrill of defiance is contagious. And watching him flex his muscles is pretty fun.

4. He loves music. When you play something he likes, he gets up on the couch and presses his head against the stereo speaker and listens intently, occasionally turning around to say, “Did you hear that? The man said, “helooooooo bayyyyybeeeee!” in his best Big Bopper voice. He has even come around to the awesome practice of making up different lyrics for songs. For a while he would accept no lyrical improvisation from me, which was sad because I love me some lyrical improvisation. But now, he’s all over it.

I joke about going crazy listening to the same album (or song) 8 (or 800) times a day but really, I am the same way with music that I love and I can’t begrudge him. I will play Barbara-Ann as many times as he asks me to because he needs to hear it that many times. Plus, now Fresco can say “ba ba ba!” along with us.

5. He has the memory of an elephant. Which is great if you are entertaining passers-by with your child singing “Barbara-Ann” but not so great if you are walking by a street that one time last year you went down and at the end you took out a package of cookies from a bag and gave him one and maybe you should just *check* your bag right now, just in case there are cookies in it because there were that one time.

Which is still pretty great.

6. The kid loves books. That hasn’t changed. All books, all the time. He keeps one on his spare pillow at night. Yes he has a spare pillow. He will only sleep on the mouse pillow but he keeps the elephant pillow next to the mouse pillow just in case.

7. He will eat a peanut butter, egg, and ketchup sandwich but will entertain no cheese other than parmesan. For his own reasons. Which we will never know.

8. I love his big, blue eyes and his straight, blond hair and his beautiful smile.

9. He is not quite on side with the idea of having a little brother, especially one who is so loud and who requires so much minding, but he is starting to act in a very brotherly, sweetly protective way. Sometimes when I am out of the room I hear him say something like, “Here you go, here’s a book, Fresco,” and Fresco says, “DAT!” and Trombone says, “That’s right, that’s a truck!”

10. A few months ago his nightly habit was to stop halfway up the stairs on his way to bed and holler down to me, “Enjoy the day, Mummy!” It came out of nowhere and was so sweet and randomly beautiful.

Happy Birthday, my sweet boy. Enjoy the day.