Dear Posie: You can crawl.

Mariposa, little butterfly,

I was explaining earlier today that when your infant learns to crawl, you begin to realize that your little newborn is becoming a child. And when your newborn becomes a child, there exists a hole left. It's not visible, but its very real. I feel it in the crux of my elbow where I still am able to hold and feed you. That weight will soon be a ghost, the ghost of your growing body that no longer needs cradled and caressed and held the way it used to. Soon, like your sister, you will happily feed yourself.

You can crawl. You scoot across the carpet and when your hand makes contact you play. With books. With farm animals. Everything goes in your mouth and I've pulled more paper trash and labels out of it than I care to admit. You play with the farm and the cars and the animals. Just the other day I watched you try, from your belly, to struggle, to reach, to place one of those animals on the fireplace.

That is a big deal.

I was reading a self-help book that called to us to remember when we were children. When the spark that led to action was as easy as thinking "wow, what does this do?" "What does this taste like?" "Could I use these sphaghetti muslces to get over there? What about climb on that?"

To be a child, is to lack fear of what might happen. In part, it's ignorance. Nothing can happen. You don't even know you are an individual agent yet. You wouldn't recognize your face in the mirror. But you can do incredible feats of self-motivation.

Soon, butterfly, you are going to be a caterpillar. You'll scurry around on your feet, you'll eat leaves off of trees before Mommy or I can stop you. Your sister will teach you the worst habits of screaming and crying. And you will play with toys, hit your head, or burn your fingers.

But you can crawl. And when you crawled you weren't afraid of anything and everything was just a matter of asking a simple question, "Can I?"

Yes, you can.

Love,
Daddy