These bruises make for better conversation…we all got bruises.

My child is turning into a two-year-old.

#sweetboy #preciousbaby #blessed #HOLYSHIT

There seems to be a force taking over his personality, and even though he isn’t speaking yet, that force finds plenty of opportunity to rear its ugly head. Last week I clipped The Kid’s fingernails and he sat quietly, watching me, with a beatific smile as angels fluttered their wings nearby and sunlight lit our faces with a heavenly glow. This week I had to hold him down as he kicked and screamed and I prayed not to draw blood. He seems to have more direction than I do, forging ahead on a path only he sees, attacking a to do list filled with items like Bang wine glasses three times and Kick puzzle piece in a circle. There! DONE.

I remember my days in the city, when New York refused to let me live on autopilot, forcing a constant vigilance with its unpredictability.

New York has been replaced by a toddler.

I picked The Kid up at school last week and it was one of the days when he saw me and his grin lit up the room as he sprinted into my arms. One of the good days. He gave his characteristic grunt of excitement, the one that demands a grunt in kind as response, and as I did respond I was delighted to hear the rest of the class chime in. A real trendsetter, that TK. He’s starting his own language.

Then one of his “friends” (they insist on calling all the kids friends even though there are some that will likely be incarcerated soon so no thanks, you will not be invited to our birthday party) came up behind TK to give him a drunk toddler bear hug and they were both knocked off-balance but it was TK who took the brunt of the fall, hitting a bookcase with his face on the way down and narrowly missing his eyeball. A few hours later he had a puffy, bruised eye and a red scrape along the side of his cheek. And I remembered with regret all the times I saw a toddler with a similar bruise and glanced askance at its owner, silently wondering…abuse?

This was two days after his Botox injections, a three-hour ordeal that involved thirty seconds of actual procedure, which meant that The Husband and TK and I survived the bulk of a morning in a small room with only each other and books for entertainment and we didn’t kill each other. Again, I find New York replaced, for if you can make it there–and by there I mean a Children’s Hospital exam room–you can make it anywhere. But the injections were administered and now we wait for them to take effect and we watch to see if they will succeed in correcting his head tilt. I study him constantly, hoping for a dramatic change but looking for even a tiny one, as he continues to navigate life with the stumbling steps of a toddler plus a few challenges thrown in. He is all toddler, all boy, scraped knees and bruised face and mood swings and unfounded opinions, and the exhaustion of sleepless newborn nights is replaced by the exhaustion of following his steps and fighting his fire with mine. (Spoiler alert: I carry a blowtorch.) I know that this stage of life, this fall season, is about learning to get back up more than it is about avoiding going down, but when you’re a parent every cut and bruise is echoed onto your own heart anyway.

I want to prevent every tumble and heal every scrape and just fix this neck thing but I know that he deserves better than that. He deserves the fullness of the life he was meant for, all the twists and turns and ups and downs that will make him exactly who he was meant to be. I know that the signature of love is on his soul and every other part of him, yes, even his neck. I know that the hands that still bore scars after resurrection so that the doubters could see do not dole out accidents; they only give grace. And so, even as we research and deliberate and wait, I know that this storyline will go just as it was meant to and that there is divine beauty–and rest–in that.

I would love to fix it all for you…

Please don’t fix a thing whatever you do.

After the open-heart-surgery-sans-anesthesia that was the fingernail clipping episode this morning, I tossed TK into his stroller and we circled the neighborhood. I listened to music with one ear and him with the other, and at one point I looked down at him and he grinned up at me. The angels fluttered; the light glowed. My brain automatically acknowledged his lips’ turned corners as a smile even though it was upside-down. My heart, with grace, is slowly learning to do the same.

*the first up