atomic mama

You are fifteen months old today!

This coincides with our being home with you for six months, which is, well, something. Six months of getting to know you and getting less sleep and getting all blissed out at random mama-moments. Six months I’ve waited for all of my life.

Not only are you crawling, but you are doing it at top speed, usually while belting out some type of battle cry. This entertains your parents to no end, and scares the hell out of the cats. While I saw this whole mobile-baby thing coming, the cats had no idea. Lily, on the other hand, gets into the spirit of the moment and takes part with enthusiasm. The addition of squeaky toy and vibrating dog just adds to the whole thing as far as I’m concerned, and I look upon my household with love and satisfaction. It was definitely too quiet around here before you came along.

You’re pulling up on everything in sight. Anything with any vertical dimension will do. Ninety percent of the time, this is my body. You also get into a wide-legged-downward-dog pose that will soon become “standing up.” I know that as soon as you learn to walk, you will run, so at the moment I’m not encouraging the whole walking thing too much. You’ll be ready when you’re ready. I, on the other hand, will not be ready and that’s just the way it is.

You love wearing barrettes in your hair. In the morning, as we’re getting ready for school, putting in your barrette is the last thing we do. As soon as you hear the “click” of the fastener, you turn and look at your reflection with the most wonderful self-satisfied expression ever. Your hair is growing and I’m not sure what to do… should I cut bangs? Should I cut it all short? Should I let it grow and just use barrettes every day? No matter what I do, I fear that you’ll bring out your baby pictures one day and say “oh, Mom! Why did you let me go around looking like that?” I want your future approval.

When I go into your room to get you up in the morning, you’re usually standing up in your crib, waiting for me. I get a lovely, “hi!!” when I open the door. I then lift you out of your crib, and you point at the bottle of milk I brought in with me, and say “bottle!” We then sit down on the rocker and I give you your first bottle of the day. It is a lovely, quiet way to start our day. After your bottle, I get you changed and dressed, and then we have a little bit of play time before we leave for school. We usually get to school about an hour before my first class, so that we have time to walk around, visit my office, and spend some time together. Some mornings you launch right into teacher Jackie’s arms when you see her, other mornings you cling to me a little longer. This morning we saw a fuzzy centipede on our way to your classroom, and we stopped and “talked” to it. I love sharing things like that with you. You notice everything. You are curious, interested. And of course, you are brilliant.

You love books, my little girl. “Book!” is a word I hear often from your lips, always uttered with excitement. You will choose a book, hand it to me or to your papa, then get settled in to listen. You are an expert page-turner. You anticipate some lines, and even “read along” with your favorite parts (three singing pigs say La La La!). You often want to read the same book over and over, which I think is cute. You sometimes want to stop in the middle of the book, which I think is less cute. Usually I finish whatever book we’ve started, because I think this is teaching you something about commitment. It is probably also about my being stubborn and always feeling compelled to finish every book I start, no matter what. It is probably also about my need for control. But whatever.

Your food repertoire has expanded. We’re still taking it slowly, you’re still eating plenty of pureed stuff, but you now like the more textured foods too. The other day you totally snubbed my offering of string cheese, so I just left a little on your highchair tray and walked away. As soon as I appeared not to care about your cheese ingestion, you became more interested in it. Pretty soon you’d even put some in your mouth, just experimentally, of course. It was a good lesson for me to back off, and a good reminder that you and I are painfully alike in some ways. We want things on our own terms, in our own time, and it should be known that the terms and/or the time can change in any way at any moment. I’m such a perfect person to be your Mama. I know all about independence. Just ask Papa.

I love hanging out with you, my little cherub, and am looking forward to our time together this summer. As soon as you learn to walk, you’ll be able to deliver cocktails to me out on the patio. Ah, the pitter-patter of little feet.

Maybe I will encourage that whole walking thing after all.

I love you like crazy, my little sunshine. And I know, deep down inside, that I’m the luckiest mama in the whole world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 14:01 and is filed under stephanie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.