October 3, 2001 - Wednesday
Last week some time Harry started saying "miss" in reference to his mother going to work. It is absolutely endearing, of course, especially on one occasion when Harry said "miss you" to mommy right as she was walking out the door for work. However, it's hard to know exactly what context Harry associates with the idea of "missing" someone or something that isn't around. His mother has been telling Harry that she will miss him when she is gone at work and it'd be understandable if Harry simply put "miss" somewhere in the same context as "goodbye." On the other hand, Harry often wakes up after mommy has already left for work and has, a couple times, said "miss" in direct reference to his mother. Those examples are a little easier to place in a relative context since clearly Harry understands that she is not there. I suppose he could be thinking about "missing" as something that is just not present anymore, like a car that has just gone around the corner. Or, perhaps he, indeed, does attach an emotion to the word.

This morning, Harry did not say "miss" in regards to mommy, but perhaps that's only because he was too distraught to think of his newer words. For whatever reason, when I walked in his room this morning, and Harry inquired about mommy, which often happens, he was not satisfied with the usual information that mommy had to go to work. This morning, Harry certainly did "miss" mommy and made quite a scene to back it up, with long, tearful cries of "mommy coming, mommy coming." I can't know for sure, of course, but somehow I'm betting that this morning had something to do with not seeing mommy very much over the last couple of days. But, I guess that's just why we needed to do the trial overnight in the first place.


Comments, opinions?