“So
what should I get for Carys for Christmas, what’s she into these days?” Asks my stepmother.
“Um,
she bangs on things a lot and sticks stuff in her mouth,” I’m sure the shrug in
my shoulders is audible through the phone.
“Oh, thanks a lot,” the
sarcasm was actually audible. I then
sent her a list of toys that I thought would be appropriate in a variety of
price ranges.
I never know what to
say when the grandparents ask me what’s new with my kids. My brain usually freezes, caught off guard I
hem and haw and then say something truly lame.
Today is momentous,
Carys has finally crawled. For the past
month or so we’ve been in the ‘crawl backward and get angry’ phase. Finally there have been enough forward
striking knee bends I feel comfortable to call it crawling. Now the diaper pail is perched up on their
dresser because that is the first thing she crawled towards. Emma used to do that in doctor’s offices,
straight for the biohazard bin.
She’s is still pretty
much into banging on things and sticking them in her mouth, I’m pretty sure
that’s most of her inner monologue,
‘What happens when I
smack this on my high chair tray? What
happens when I stick in my mouth?’
She is still pretty
mellow and only really cries when I put her in her car seat or when I put her
to bed. The look on her face when I put
her to bed usually strikes a chord of ridiculous guilt, she looks so betrayed,
‘Wait, what? You brought me in this dark and relaxing
room, not just to nurse but for that?
Noooooooo!’ Then I get the pacifier in her mouth, ‘num, num, num,
snorfle, zonk, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.’
A few days ago I pulled up all courage, all my 'what if she chokes?' fear, and I gave her chopped up banana. I spread it on the tray before her and held my breath, I immediately wondered if I should have waited until Scott was home, between the two of us we should be able to remember our baby CPR training, right? She was entranced. Little fingers spread, smashed and pinched. Eagerly they brought the little white triangles to her mouth, she mashed them up and swallowed, with no choking. Then she giggled. She kept giggling all the while.
In the other corner we have Emma; who currently has an addiction
to Dora. We’ve slowly weaned her off her
off her near pathological addiction to apple juice, which I think means that
she is largely dehydrated all the time. She now participates
in a crime I like to call ‘toyjacking,’ wherein she runs by an unsuspecting baby
grabs the toy that the baby is innocently mouthing and hurls it as far away as
she possibly can. She still believes
that everything she touches is hers, and now that Carys can actually get her
chubby little fingers on things this provides a perfect stage for
toyjacking.
Emma is also in a hefty
active imagination stage, all around our house I find little ‘beds’ with her
stuffed animals and dolls laid down to sleep.
Today I did it, I didn’t worry about educational games or teaching her
anything I actually played with her. I
became a ‘fairy princess ballerina,’ not a very good one, but I tried. I pulled a bright pink tutu onto one of my
thighs (I was quickly instructed that this was incorrect, but picturing ripping
elastic and tulle I wasn’t going to attempt to pull it up to my hips), balanced
a crown on my head, put back on a pair of heels that I had donated to her dress
up basket, and sat while she fluttered about me. I soon learned that all she really needed was
an audience to her own play. I watched
her act out all the things that she sees, she ‘washed the babies,’ and combed
their hair, all actions that I perform for her and her little sister.
Sometimes I get a
little sad to watch my daughter act out domestic chores as play. I wonder is that just because she is with me
all day and that’s what I do? (Then it makes me sad to realize that’s what I do
all day long.) Or does she gravitate to that because she is female? Every time she pipes up about princesses and
fairies I wonder if I have failed her, failed to expose her to positive role
models that are not royalty or only valued for beauty, or if that’s just what she is
attracted to. Nonetheless, she is definitely very interested in fairies, princesses, and movie stars....sigh.
1 comment:
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