New Year, New Memories

It's 2008. The extended Christmas holiday is over. And I cannot help but feel melancholic about it. I can't help but feel melancholic about everything.

We have quite a bunch of photographs taken during the holiday, but this is my favorite.

Laila and I had gone for a snack at the neighborhood Jollibee late afternoon January 2nd. Just us girls. She had some spaghetti and fries and iced tea and a whole lot of playtime in the indoor playground. She also got the lavander Tweety Bird dresser light that the other kids drooled over.

She darted all over the playground, climbed all the way to the top and jostled for space on the slide. She made small talk with some of the older kids, what they chatted about I had no idea. Laila's great with the older kids but she needs work on how to handle the smaller ones. She needs coaching to let the younger kids pass by unmenaced. And she would sometimes complain that this baby or that stepped on or pushed her.

Baby Cat lounged lazily be the playground entrance, minding her own business as the other kids stepped over her. And I literally had flashbacks of the first time we let her play in that very same playground.

Baby Cat must have been around a year old and was still unsteady on her feet. I was watching over her like a mommy lion, ready to pounce at the faintest sign that the older, more boisterous kids might bump or step on her.

She had been content in sitting in the middle of the cushioned giant fiberglass box serving as the playground's entrance. Laila didn't even want to try crawling through the tube that connected the box she was in to the neighboring box. She just sat there, looking passively as the more nimble kids darted past.

Now she's one of them, the big babies.

Baby Cat hadn't needed a highchair this time. She patiently sat on the regular plastic chair, nibbling on a fry and opening her mouth to the next spoonful of spaghetti. We spent an hour before agreeing to go home just as it was getting dark.

She held my hand on the way to the tricycle station.