Today Ari is 19 months old

He continues to thrive in school. Yet I do notice little things. He has become interested in stuffed animals all of the sudden. There is a little kitty someone gave him--a beanie baby, I think--that we had kept up next to the blender so it earned the moniker "smoothie kitty." Today he clutched smoothie kitty to his body on his way into school. Hearing the story from Andi, it made me wonder if perhaps he is becoming insecure. I mean, I guess I'm expecting insecurity here. Wouldn't that be normal? But apparently as soon as he got into school he dropped smoothie kitty--splat--right on the floor and charged for the play-dough tables. (Tot Lot makes their play dough themselves--so much more appealing than the stuff, however beloved, that comes out of those cans.) Andi said it looked for all the world as though Ari had a job to do and he was there to get it done. Yesterday the job had gotten interrupted--but by gum, today it was going to be reckoned with. When she said good-bye he proffered his cheek for a kiss and kept on "working." That's my boy.

I guess I'm not that different. I started my new internship today and the woman leading the trainings said, "If you aren't nervous, I'd be worried about you." I thought, "I hope not." In my case, anyway, I think maturity might exempt me from that. Life owes me that much, because I wasn't a bit nervous. Only about getting there on time.

Yesterday, on the way back from the market, I just got so tired I felt I could not walk another step. Yikes! That's not good! I had planned to go to the library with Ari, but it was all that I could do just to get home. After all, I had not gotten a good night's sleep for many nights (how many is 19 months??), and it will keep being brutal until Ari is (relatively speaking) weaned. Andi's help has been beyond invaluable. She got up with Ari around 3:30 in the morning and fed him bananas and milk. He is settling down, but we still have a long way to go to get him to sleep on his own. It's like we're going through what lots of people do during the newborn phase, right now. That was such a blissful time for me, I didn't know what people were complaining about. Now I get it! I don't know how Andi does it. She is a saint, I want that noted on the Buddhist record, right now.

Actually, I didn't sleep last night either, but for some reason I am not so gut wrenchingly tired today. It's fun to get back in the action. I am also kinda excited about Research Methods (for G-d's sake, what has happened to me?? Come pluck me out of this social work trance, willya?) and two independent studies I am doing. One is on the question of spiritual competency--who decides? How do clinicians decide what is appropriate when working with clients from different faith backgrounds? This arose because last year I co-lead a Healthy Aging group and led a "metta" (lovingkindness) meditation. It went over really well and of course I loved it. I loved leading it, loved creating it, loved the devotion and beauty that arose on my clients' faces as they engaged with it. But many of my group members were Baptist, etc. and I wondered how I would address this one-on-one and what were the ethics and balance-of-power on the whole thing. So I'm interviewing clinicians. The other independent study is on the G/L/B/T/Q elder community in Cambridge. I'm excited about that as well. I really want to learn as best I can what the needs are there and how to meet them according to the population as best as I can find out. Yay, Research Methods! I may learn to love you after all!? We'll find out.