All i write about now is Chiara! I’m not sure how I feel about this complete hijacking of my thoughts and creative energies, but she is so fascinating that I can’t stop myself. I guess she’s become my muse.

While I was feeding Chiara dinner tonight, she gestured to a grocery receipt just out of arm’s reach. I gave it to her and she clenched it in both hands, pulled, and handed me a finger-sized piece that she had torn off. Then she did this again, and again. The pieces got larger, thankfully, or we would have been sitting there until she was ready for college! Then we got down to a piece only about two inches long by a half inch (the original intact receipt was about 10 inches or so).

I started to think about Zeno’s paradox, not sure if I have the right name, where if you tear a piece of paper in half and then tear one of those pieces in half, you can continue to do this to infinity. Theoretically, it has no end. How would this end with Chiara?

She has such incredible dexterity for a 16-month-old. She tore and tore her little piece of paper, handing each piece to me, until it could no longer be torn because it was too small for her itty bitty fingertips. Then she stared at her little shred, about the size of the tip of a pencil eraser, and she handed it to me. The end.