Mittens

You're my winter baby. In the moments just preceding your entrance into this world, your Grandma G. had two giant gift bags in the entryway to grab on her and Papa's trip to see your face for the first time. One bag was blue, and the other one, the one you received, was pink.

The bag was a sweet explosion of pink and femininity- handmade quilts and afghans, dresses, boots with the fur, books, photo albums, leggings, and the tiniest, sweetest winter hat and pair of baby mittens I'd ever seen. These baby gifts were items she had been collecting for years and years, waiting for the just right moment when she finally had a You to gift.



You wore the hat until it was too small. Here's you on New Year's Eve, 2007, as you attended your first party. I looked and I looked for a photo of you wearing the tiny mittens, which matched the hat perfectly, and were strung together. But, no picture exists, because you did NOT like mittens when you were three weeks old. I would flip back the fleece cover of your carseat and find your tiny pink hands had once again escaped the confines of your soft, sweet mittens. You always have been a determined little human.



And now, three years later, not much has changed. Your mittens are bigger of course, and no longer are strung together by a tethering piece of yarn. Yet, you still do not care for them. We fight this battle everyday. Last weekend, when we played outside, I found you in the backyard, your pink hands bare against the cold and wet snow, and your mittens, abandoned here on the deck stairs.

'Lil' dude, you have to wear your mittens outside," I said.
No Mama. It's too hard for me. I can't use my hands when I wear them things.

How come so much has changed, yet, nothing really has?