When you are nine months old there are a lot of things to figure out. Funnily enough, the same seems true of being in your, um, very late twenties... It never seems to end, the learning and while it is always a good thing to learn, it can be painful.
Nahanni is adjusting wonderfully to her life as a mobile citizen of the world. She cruises around more quickly every day, her dexterity and her control are increasing exponentially and every day there is something new to report when daddy comes home. She has lately taken to releasing her grip from things and attempts to stand on her own, sometimes with spectacularly undesirable consequences. Why just this morning I watched her go from gleefully smacking the lid of the toilet like a drum (yes, I cleaned it) to a very unwieldy porcelain facewash which left her, understandably, in tears. We then sing our little 'baby goes boom' song and I find some way to distract her from the painful lessons of the newly mobile. They are tough lessons, but necessary, and it seems an apt metaphor for where I am in my life too. I too am trying to learn how to navigate this world in which I find myself; to organize babysitting and activities and to somehow not completely subjugate my own life in the meantime. As she learns new things, expands her universe it seems somedays as though mine has shrunken down to the size of this apartment, to the size of the little sphere in which she and I rotate around one another. But we are learning, both of us, although sadly, no one is here to scoop me up and sing any 'mommy goes boom' songs. Perhaps I should write one...
I am so proud of her though, in a million ways. She is an absolutely delightful child, and that goes beyond just the blind parental love that we all feel for our own. This little girl is so happy and easy-going I don't know what I have done to deserve her. For all my issues surrounding sleep, suffering those nights of teething, it really hasn't been bad -- I just am a person who so desperately needs sleep, like food and water and air, I cannot survive with out scads of it and so that was hard, but she had been sleeping 7-to-7 now for quite some time and I feel blessed by that and so many other things about her. She is so big now in my arms that sometimes she is the weight of sadness; I hate to see her growing so fast. But at the same time she now likes to tuck her thumb into her mouth and press her downy little head into my neck when we get ready for sleepy time and I feel intoxicated by the very smell of her beneath my nose. I know cuddles like this will not last forever so I hoard them like treasure.
Language is something that comes naturally to me and so we study a lot during the day, flash cards with pictures and four or five languages that I repeat in the hopes that she will grasp them easily and become a multi-lingual genius. We do Spanish and French and ASL and she is so funny when she gets something new. She has begun to say 'duck' and (b)anana and she makes the most hilarious sign for bear I have ever seen. I love to pull out the Eric Carle book 'Brown Bear' just to see her little arms waving in the air, making the sign. And of course, she has been making the piggy noise for ages and we never tire of pulling our pictures of pigs to entice her to scrunch up little face and snort. Whenever we are reading I get her to look at me while I make the sign and it is so funny to see her raise those big brown eyes, studded with feathery lashes, seeking to learn it. The only problem now is that my rather limited supply of signs is coming to its end and I will soon have to learn more. I admit, I don't enjoy every minute; sometimes it can be exceedingly tedious being home all day with a baby, but I can tell you I enjoy the vast majority of my time here with her. I am a fortunate soul indeed.
She has her baby steps and I have mine. I've been talking to the program liaison at UBC's Creative Writing Program, ordering my transcripts from WLU (which frightens me in much the same way dealing with my financial life does, but I'm starting to really leap into that fear-filled little playground too...) but the point is, I too am learning to walk -- learning to walk in the new light that has come with me becoming a mother and all the challenges and joys that come with it. We will both fall, we will both have times when we just need to cry, but I think of those first real steps, the ones which feel the most victorious and I know that we will both run after that.
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