One of Charlotte’s favorite ways to travel. Sometimes she’s too squirmy for the wrap or too tiny for the stroller. It seems she’s just perfect perched on Papa’s shoulder. At 10 1/2 months she smiles with a knowing sweetness, a wise compassion, and a mischievous monkeyhood. She’s not actually a monkey. If she were an animal she would be a bat. She would have the bat’s ability to get great speed in the air, have 20/20 night vision for those middle of the night feedings, yet have the option to walk awkwardly on the ground via her batwing joints, or to put it more accurately and impressively, scientific-wise: winged forelimbs.
She gets around these days on her hindlimbs, growing more bold with each wobbly step, relying less on her hello kitty walker, which was bright red when I was a lass, but has, over 33 years, faded to an uneven pale pink. I’m sure this deterioration is due to a totally healthy breakdown of plastic materials, chemicals, possibly lead…I’m confident this is not a toxic thing to have in my otherwise non-toxic household. And when I say ‘confident’ I mean ‘pretending’.
Anyway, she’s a bat. I just made that up, but as I’m figuring it out it makes complete sense. Her birthday IS in October after all. And I’m her mom, so that means I OWN her and I can make shit, or in this case bat-shit, up whenever I want.
So it has been decided: Charlotte is a flying mammal, whether she’s hanging off of Papa’s shoulder or not.