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july afternoon thoughts

July 15, 2005

rain just started pouring down from the sky, i notice with a glance in the mirror sitting next to my desk. the mirror is reflecting the front windows of the room directly into my view so i don't have to turn my head. the rain is presumably leftovers from some lackadaisical and slow moving hurricane, the clouds and humidity of which have parked over western pa. steamy! it makes me want to go to sleep. like seb. today i like that all our windows are closed to outside noises, the air conditioner humming. i'm glad that the world (and our crazy neighbor lady and her grandson) are being held at bay by our quiet, closed house. do not disturb.

seb is beginning to speak in two word phrases which, for being only 3 or 4 mos since beginning speech therapy, is super cool. milk please, go home (which never means seb and always means me--"hey mamma, go home!"), dog in, go out... to name a few. now that he is getting the notion that language is a useful thing, he's a bit frantic about it. it's showing me more how his mind works. it's showing me that when i tell him an hour in advance that we might go somewhere in the car, he has fixated on it, and can't think of anything else-- "CAR! CAR! OUT! OUT! CAR! CAR! CAR! IN CAR! IN CAR!" it's showing me that i need to never tell him in advance that we are doing anything but sitting inside the house doing absolutely nothing all day long. "nope, no car, no out, no nothing." so there.

a thunder storm is passing our way, so i get seb up from his nap and we hit the porch for a front row seat. the thunder and lightning remind seb of when he saw 4th of july fireworks from his seat in the car as we drove over the west end bridge. he keeps saying "hot" which i suppose is his word for "fireworks". when the rain ebbs, he says, "done". but not quite. another torrent hits us. i secretly hope it keeps doing this for a while, though i know that soon, brian will be coming home from work on his bike none too keen on riding in inch deep rain on butler street. oh well. rain, rain, go away. come again some other day. or not.

seb gets down from my lap and stands looking over the side of the porch into the street. his left hand is up in his now-shorn hair running and flipping his fingers through it. it reminds me of when brian used to wear a baseball cap all the time, and he'd take it off and use both hands to muss it up. i never try to play with brian's hair anymore--i did once, once--he's convinced that it will make him go bald. i wonder if his mother told him that when he was little, as he stood, maybe like seb, constantly playing with his hair. i can almost hear her yelling, "if you keep doin' 'at, bri, you're gonna go bald!" or maybe it was the last straw, brian running newly peanut-buttered fingers through it. seb does that too. i don't know for sure, but i prefer to think so. like father like son.