Leaving Tess for five days was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Every night we were in Melbourne I would go to sleep with her face in my thoughts. Her big beautiful smile, her fluffly [sic] hair, her soft clean smell. My hip ached where she should be. My face felt less smiley because I didn’t have her beautiful smile to return. Her small rosebud lips were burned into my retina so that when I closed my eyes they were all I could see. Tess belongs with me.
Anyway, seeing her again at the airport was one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever experienced. Even though she had her patch on she could see it was me (or maybe she could also hear is was me!), her face cracked open like the sun coming out from behind a rain cloud, and all was right.
But she’d also changed. How could she change while I was gone? It was only 5 days! She had changed in the best possible way: she was moving. Tess started “commando” crawling while I was away. She uses her elbows and knees to push herself along. It’s not the classic crawling that Rose did, but it’s definitely locomotion. She can get across the room pretty quickly now, especially if she spies some white paper. (White paper is her most desired object of affection! Mmmm, yummy, white paper.) But I’ve been around enough babies to know that not all kids do classic crawling. Bum shuffling, crab calling, babies do all kinds of crazy stuff.
