It's easy to be happy about a brand new baby, there is something infinitely exciting that carries you through the fears and the fright and the long, long night of those first magical weeks and months when you've just brought home a new life, especially the first one. A magical tide that carries you through sleepless nights and learning each other and unassailable screaming and illness and everything in between. There is a sense of adoration that envelopes you such that you are immune to the notion that it will ever be anything other than a babymoon.
And then your child develops a personality.
I knew it would happen, I even lamented it several times over the course of my musings here; seeing a parent screaming at a child in the mall, watching kids running miles ahead of their parents and wondering how they could let them so far from their grasp. I wondered how you could ever not feel inundated by the rush of love and emotion that came with this wondrous new person. I was fortunate, I had (and still do have) a really delightful and easy child, malleable in every sense -- although perhaps that will make this new transition to a having a child with opinions and likes and dislikes that much more difficult.
Where once I had a child who was pretty content to hang out by herself, playing for a while whilst I attempted to make some sense of the disorder that always seems to wash over my household in a torrent of piles; paper, dishes, laundry etc., I now have a child who needs to be with me every second of the day. She weeps uncontrollably sometimes when I leave the room, those big dramatic tears spilling over the well of her eyes. There are times when you'd think I'd left her for two weeks, she's that distraught, so needless to say, I don't get a lot accomplished of late.
Nahanni has also, to my mixed delight and chagrin, discovered that there are these magical things called options. Where before she would simply eat whatever we spooned into her mouth or placed in little shards within her sweeping reach, now she has preferences for things and she does not hesistate to apprise you of them. I finally introduced cheese into her diet and we quickly discovered that unless you hide it, you will spend the whole meal being chastised with that ever-pointing little finger until the stash has been consumed, regardless of your plan for her meal. Where she used to eat everything with gusto, you now have to be more strategic about when you bring out the big guns, the applesauce, the tiny orange chunks of cheese, the yogurt. Oh, not just any yogurt mind you, only the finest, thickest Balkan yogurt for my little gourmand. Not that I would feed her any of the usual yogurt that is replete with fillers, but sometimes I can't get the Balkan style and she seems to feel that it is an affront to her epicurean sensibilites. Which is not to say that she still doesn't eat a wonderful array of things, but it has certainly begun to be more of a challenge.
I am also beginning to see the light bulb go off with regard to numerous other parts of her life that were once more simple. While she was sick recently (again, yes - we'd only just gotten rid of the flu which swept through the whole house) she often woke up with a stuffed head, boogers crusting over her little nostrils, her curls damp with fever and we felt so bad when she woke up crying an hour or so after her bedtime that we let her come out and hang with us while we relaxed. Now I wouldn't call it a mistake, per se, but I would certainly admit that we opened a door that may have been stemming the tide of those magical 'options'. Suddenly she understood that there could be more time, fun time even, when the tv was on and we sat on the couch and laughed as she threw herself backwards into the cushions. The sickness went and the waking up did not. We could tell that she was testing her boundaries and let me tell you, the breaking of that new little habit has not been particularly fun, especially for Ez who is charged with calming her when these episodes occur. I am steadfastly refusing to acquiesce to what I know is a ploy to have more mommy. For some reason (and I know that this will be reversed with extreme prejudice in about 15 years) my daughter cannot get enough of me and she's not afraid to let everyone within earshot know it. Mercifully she is a very bright little girl and she is catching on quickly that this ploy is not working. Mommy has been decidedly off-duty after 7:00 pm and that, is one of life's hard knocks for this little one right now.
Now all this is not to say that I don't still delight in my child. I am simply admitting that the easy, tip-toe through the tulips of infancy seems to be coming to a close. Now I have a baby that tests everything with her mouth and so, gets sick. This is part of this new stage. She wants things she cannot have, wants to go places that are not safe, wants me to be there for every second of her day and these things are not possible - and she's not going to like it. Things are getting less easy, less simple and it is really a new challenge to roll with the ship as it lists and bobs through this next section of waves. Was it easier when she was smaller, simpler? Of course. But when I see her learning and becoming her true self, willful or not, I delight in the discovery along with her. It tests me, but it is delightful nonetheless. We were reading a book the other day 'The Belly Button Book' and she started pulling at her shirt to expose the strange little nub of her belly-button -- and I delighted. Now you can ask her where it is, or about her nose and her 'hair-do' and she will show you, an impishly proud smile beaming across her little face. She's begun to point to the computer and say 'Nuh-nuh' - which is her version of her name, and it means she wants to look at the slideshow of her pictures which takes up all the RAM on my computer. Now. I mean right now. She also will point and bounce up and down which means she wants to dance to the latin music that comes from my 'Coffee Break Espanol' Spanish lessons that I listen to every day. How can I feel upset about all this new personality when the good far outweighs the bad? Yes, she's more willful, but still invariably happy and easy to please and so I am lucky indeed. I am frightened by the tunnel I see at the end of the light of the hallowed babymoon in which I have been deeply ensconced; I am afraid of the time in the future when my daughter will inevitably push one too many buttons and I will see her not as my perfect child but as the ripening individual that she is. I may not like the moment but I will love the results. I look forward to discovering this little girl even as I am stocking up on ibuprofen in advance of the impending headaches...
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