The Other Side: A Final Note For the First Year

Posted on March 31, 2013 by The Waiting

Dear Miss C,

Hello, my girl. It’s been one heck of a year, eh? I will never forget the moment I awoke at 6:15 one year ago today and knew that you were coming. Just the day before I had been at Target doing some mundane shopping and thinking about how I still had to wait one more week to meet you. Just like your mom, though, you were a little early. That’s a good habit to get into.

I knew you were mine, but I still had to get to know-know you. There is no orientation weekend for babies and moms; you just have to dive in headfirst and hold your breathe. I was dumbstruck that nothing in my life could have prepared me for the mix of emotions I felt when I looked at you and attempted to give you what you needed. I often thought about how ludicrous it was that only a few days before, you were still baking inside me. And now, you were out. Just out. I was as new to being a mom as you were to being a human, and we both cried a lot and slept very little in those days.

OK, so maybe you slept. Sometimes.

Looking all happy with the world at 2MO.

But we learned. You taught me to practice a brand of patience I never dreamed existed. This was a special kind of patience that I couldn’t acquire while waiting at the DMV or even teaching ESL kindergarten. This patience wasn’t forced; it just existed within and without me at the same time. You broke my heart with your sweetness and delicateness. I had no desire but to love you and give you the best of the world. All of a sudden, those long, long weeks of not sleeping and just struggling to get through the day are a distant memory, even though they were less than a year ago. This is because you are magical and somehow found a way to contort time itself. Um, maybe not. But I’m your mom so to me you’ll always be magical.

“Highchairs are AWESOME!!!! ZOMG!”

You have been an easy baby. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. You slept through the night when you were seven weeks old and weren’t collicky. You loved being held and curling up on our tummies while you slept. You’ve never much liked it when I put you in you playpen or your scooter when I took a shower, but day by day you’re learning that you can occupy and entertain yourself. The world is your oyster and as much as I cringe when you dart towards the dishwasher whenever you notice that it’s open, I am glad that you care. I’m reluctantly happy that you would rather tear pages out of books than watch TV. You are my special little mess and I relish the fits you throw because then I know that you’re feeling. I have made a little breathing feeler. If you ever have children yourself, you’ll understand why that’s such a big deal to me.

I have made a human, and that human is you. You were the one I waited for all along.

Vote early and vote often. Let your voice be heard.

Let your voice be heard. And go ahead and rip your socks off if you don’t want to wear them, too. Do what you gotta do.

The other day, we were taking a bath and you looked straight at me and babbled a sentence-length series of syllables. Your sentence was full of meaning and intent. The words weren’t there, but you had basically taken off the training wheels of language. I stared back in your eyes and marveled that you had something to say. And not only that, but it was to me that your words were directed. Please always, always know that your words are valuable and strong. Take care of them and own them. When you use them, be kind and smart, both to others and yourself.

Knowing you has easily been the most incredible honor of my life. The word “amazing” springs to mind, but I hear that word too often and so it surely cannot describe the uniqueness of watching you interact with the world and knowing that you are mine in a way that no one else is. I adore you, my Sweetbabybuney. Thank you for being you and loving me in a way that no one else ever has or ever will. Thank you for existing and for making me be a better me. Know that Daddy and I love you more than we could ever possibly tell you in a letter or a poem. Our hearts keep growing with every breath you take. Keep inhaling and soak in this big world at your feet.

Happy birthday,

Mommy

Ruts

Posted on March 13, 2013 by The Waiting

I’m in a rut, but it’s the kind of rut that comes about not from mundane habit but from new stimuli. The last couple weeks have decimated any routine I was on with C and we’re starting to feel the brunt of it. Sometimes I forget what a finely-tuned clock a baby is until a grain of sand is introduced into her workings. B was on Spring Break last week so we went to Charlotte to visit Kendra and Chris at their house. We had a lot of fun and she was able to get all her naps (C, not Kendra. LOL) but all the driving and new surroundings kind of threw her for a loop. A couple days after we got back, my mom and Aunt Pam came to visit us because they were on their Spring Breaks. Again, a lot of fun and great face time. C was in the middle of her stranger danger phase the last time we saw them and now that it’s passed, she enjoyed her time with them. But she was tedious and grumpy a lot of the time too. I couldn’t relax when we all went for brunch on Sunday because I was nervous she’d lose her composure at any moment.

She’s been taking more and more steps lately as well as communicating her needs to us through signs and body language. All these new milestones are jarring for her as well as for me because once again I have to recalibrate the motions of our day. Plus, the added frustration when she can’t express what she wants tends to be intense.

Let me also go on the record as saying that Daylight Saving Time is the biggest load of crap. I really do not get it at all. C is handling the change pretty well but I cannot get used to putting her to bed at night when the sun is shining in her face. It kind of takes away the credence of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

So ruts.

We will be spending another year in our town because B did not find a job elsewhere. We both did an incredible amount of work to apply to many, many jobs for him, but it was all for naught. I am not as upset as I was a few weeks ago when it was evident that he would not hear back from any of the jobs he applied to, but it still stinks. I will stay upbeat for C, though, because she doesn’t need to know that I’m upset about something as inconsequential as geography when she’s enduring growth milestones that really are frustrating. At least I can express myself and walk with ease.

I wrote last summer about starting the freelance journey but it’s no surprise (to me at least) that I am just now getting around to figuring out how to write for money. Hang around me long enough and you’ll notice that whenever I have a big ol’ plan it often takes me years to actually implement it. So yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out where to begin and I often get overwhelmed because there’s so much grunt work to do. B’s job hunt has temporarily soured me on putting a tremendous amount of work and time into a project that will likely reap no benefits in the foreseeable future. I’m just being honest here. I’d like to have one small sure thing just to break up the monotony. I know full well that the work I put in won’t actually be for nothing, because I’m also a firm believer that there are no mistakes in the trajectory of life. All those rejections and false leads make you who you are and can be a boon if you chose to learn from them.

I guess I’m just tired of learning right now.

I feel like my blog is suffering too. Last night I tried writing a post I had had brewing in my mind for awhile. The kind of post that is structured and has a point beyond catharsis. Unlike this one, for instance. But it just wasn’t coming. I don’t know who I was trying to channel when I wrote it because the words I wrote didn’t sound like me or anyone else for that matter. Hrumph. I also haven’t been reading as much which I apologize for if I’ve been neglecting your blog. Lately it just seems like a lot of work. Again, just honesty. And believe me, it’s really not you, it’s me.

So hang in there with me. This post seems to be over now because C is waking from her nap twenty minutes early.

Duty calls.

And likely, doodie too. Jokes.

The Other Side: Notes on the Eleventh Month

Posted on March 7, 2013 by The Waiting

This is the second to last first-year post I will be writing about Wee Cee. When I named this series “The Other Side”, I was referencing the fact that she was no long in utero. Now the title seems totally outmoded. Of course she’s no longer in my belly. She belongs out in the world and has basically found her place here. I almost don’t know what I’ll do with myself once her first year is over and I won’t be writing these Other Side posts anymore. Don’t be fooled: it’s not about writing the posts; it’s about raising a child who is way more toddler than defenseless baby. That’s scary. I’ve been thinking more and more about her impending childhood and teenagehood recently and it makes me feel overwhelmed because if I’ve learned anything during her first year of life, it’s that it goes fast and the older she gets the more complicated things will be. Stressing over whether she has gotten enough to eat will be replaced with stressing over fractions, not-so-nice kids at school, first dates, and driving a car.

So let’s focus on her babyhood while we still can, shall we?

The one where she has giant squid eyes

Her days are now made up of struggles to get words out. She sticks her little tongue out and flutters it around in an effort to say what she needs. She gets frustrated at first, but I try to take her seriously and hide my amusement at her funny talking faces. We think she said “bottle” this morning. When all else fails, we ask her what a cow says and she answers with a tone of “mmmmmm”. It doesn’t matter that she makes the same sound when we ask her about the sounds of cats, horses, and sheep. She’s got the cow down so we’re good.

She can stand unassisted. She hasn’t made that first unassisted step yet, but she can hold off for awhile as far as I’m concerned because she’s difficult enough to keep up with as it is. Sometimes I feel like she gets frustrated that our apartment is small and she doesn’t have a lot of space to roam, but when I think about it, it’s really probably me who is frustrated. She doesn’t know anything else so as far as she is concerned, the place is fine. It’s just that a lot of places are off-limits to her. She is obsessed with rooting around in the fridge and the dishwasher, and we recently had to just make them unavailable to her because she was tossing everything on the floor really loud and it got to be too annoying to constantly clean up. Incidentally, pulling her away from the dishwasher when she’s already spotted that it’s open is a surefire way to make her Angry with a capital A. Stiff torso, rigid body, blood-curdling screams. Eeee-gah.

*UPDATE: Not three hours after I wrote this, she took three consecutive steps towards me. They weren’t repeated for the rest of the day. BUT STILL. :D

Standin’ queen!

Her motor skills are blossoming. She loves clapping, and she tries to snap her fingers with pretty impressive precision. She likes to make the motions to wash her hands. The one thing she hasn’t gotten entirely is blowing a kiss. Instead of holding her hand up to her mouth, she holds it up to her forehead so it looks like she’s doffing a make-believe hat. She also understands the purpose of her comb and likes to run it across her head after her bath.

The couch makes a good impromptu teething ring.

She is not a fan of TV. Seriously, I could not pay her with a million Cheerios to watch TV for 5 minutes. I realize that this is a relative problem that many people would love to have because their kid cries if they don’t get to watch TV, but I need to get stuff done around the apartment without having to worry that C is going to dump all her toys in the toilet in the meantime or scream at me to let her out of her play pen. I worry that I make myself too available to her because when I try to get her to play alone or amuse herself for a little while, she has a hard time settling herself down and detaching herself from me. I don’t want her to think that the world revolves around her and that she can always have my attention whenever she wants it, but she’s being pretty resistant to playing by herself for any substantial period of time. I keep telling myself that she will grow out of it. After all, she is still a baby. Also, her fussiness seems to be magnified to me a lot more when she’s going through a cluster of milestones all at once, so that is probably also making my anxiety a bit more intense.

We are gearing up her her first birthday at the end of the month. Her actual birthday is on Easter Sunday, so we will likely do big fun birthday activities on the Saturday before and then have a special family party on her actual birthday. She is a big fan of ham so she will be in hog heaven with her Easter ham! To help us celebrate her bloggy b-day, remember to send in your baby picture to thewaitingblog(at)gmail(dot)com by March 27 so you can be entered to win a prize pack filled with delicious North Carolina goodies!

Opening up an early birthday present from Kendra and Chris

Now, to take a nap. That little gal has got me tired. ;D

The world is neat.

The Other Side: Notes on the Tenth Month

Posted on February 4, 2013 by The Waiting

Something happened over the course of the last month that I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around. I think it must have been around the second week of January that I looked at Wee Cee and noticed that she was turning into a little girl. She is just as much child now as she is baby, which is cool and terrifying. I woke up one morning and in the crib sat a kid who resembles a person and not just a human hamburger. Her little limbs are getting longer and her head isn’t the perfect circle it used to be. Her bright little eyes say things and she’s not just a prop in our parental charade. I call her my daughter and the word doesn’t seem forced. She is a daughter, my daughter. She’s not just a human with girl parts anymore.

For one, she can communicate. Her babbles mean things and aren’t arbitrary, although they are a lot of fun. A couple weeks ago, B and I were lazing around one Saturday morning in bed when we heard a loud MA-MA come from her room. Normally, she wakes up and babbles around for awhile just for practice, but that Mama had force around it. It meant something. We got up and peeked into her room, where we found her proudly standing up in her crib. Standing in the crib while holding onto the rail was a new feat for her. She knew she had accomplished something and she just wanted us to see! Of course she called my name! She was hitting milestones all over the place that morning. And I cried, obvs. My standing up baby had called me.

And just like that, I’m welling up again.

Source http://www.tovekjellmark.com/otherness/2011/09/animal_human/

Yep. Source

Moving on. Let’s talk about crawling. Get it? Nevermind. Crawling is transitioning into what will soon be walking. She recently started elevating her entire body off the ground when she crawls, placing her weight on her feet instead of her knees. She looks a lot like Mowgli from The Jungle Book when she’s doing it, especially since her dipe covers are very Mowgli-esque. Disney didn’t even pay me to say that.

Side note: Those covers are expensive, so should you actually want to pay me to say something, gimme a holla.

Redecorating.

Her toys are her friends. She’s got so much personality that she had to give some of it to her stuffed toys, which she loves the most. She nuzzles them and hugs them with an amorous “mmmmmm!”

What else? Oh yes, for those of you who were keeping score, breastfeeding is over. Done and done. I was reluctant to wean her since breastfeeding is highly encouraged for their entire first year and also because it would mark the end of a special, intimate part of our relationship, but she had shown pretty much no interest in it since she was five months old. I had been pumping 100% of her milk for months and I still wasn’t making enough where we could avoid supplementing with formula. So we fought the good fight and when my pump broke three weeks ago, I took it as a sign that we could just stop. Even though I feared the end of breastfeeding, I couldn’t be happier that it’s now over. Not being hooked up to that pump is really freeing.

Sharing is caring. Notice the Totoro in the left corner. We had to move it into our room because it is apparently the scariest thing in her life right now.

All of a sudden, C is someone who I actually want to be around. She’s my little buddy. It’s like the guesswork is over in her life, at least for now. This is probably more of a reflection on me as a mom and not necessarily her as a baby, but now we can take her out in public and completely relax because we are pretty certain she won’t implode. Even if she did, we’d handle it. She usually eats when we give her food, and if she doesn’t then it’s no big deal because we’ll just try again later. Now was the time everyone was referring to super early in her life when they told me it would get easier. At this very instant, she’s hanging out in her crib. She’s supposed to be napping, but instead she’s just lying there chatting with her stuffed lion. And do you know what? It’s OK if she skips her nap. I’m all for setting boundaries for her and coaxing her in the right direction when she does dangerous and impractical things, but when it comes to things like naps and the amount of food she eats, she largely knows what’s best for herself.

Our daily life is changing. Gone are the nights when she’d fall asleep in my arms and then I’d carefully carry her to her swing or crib while trying not to rouse her. But I’m not crying, at least, not anymore. Now, instead, I hold her close and sing her lullabies. She snuggles back and nuzzles me with the same fervor that she used to nurse. We still have that touch. That touch that makes me her Mama and her my sweet Bebe.

The Other Side: Notes on the Eighth Month

Posted on December 4, 2012 by The Waiting

To the baby who will eventually read all these posts about her development over her first year:

I’m sorry this is going to be a short summary of all the stuff you’ve been doing. You are currently napping in your swing*, and I have no idea how long your slumber will last. Writing about you during your waking hours is out of the question, as you are in to everything and love to have my full, undivided attention.

*Which, incidentally, you totally busted out of a few days ago. I heard you screaming bloody murder and when I went to go check on you, you were dangling by your leg from the strap. My apologies for not buying you that baby straight-jacket that could have held you in place.

Crawling has given you a new lease on life. There is no turning back from your semi-independence. I think back on eight months ago when you were smaller than the throw pillows on the couch and could barely latch on when I fed you. Now you can make it across the entire apartment in about 15 seconds. You are growing too fast. You’re killing me, C. I want you to stay small, but with each new syllable that you utter, you are romancing me with the more mature you. You’re coaxing me with your delicate movements and I am beginning to wonder if all that time I was pregnant with you and when you were a newborn was just a figment of my imagination, since the child I have now is more a girl than a baby. These two yous can’t exist within the space of one year.

I am resigning myself to your 12 month old outfits, even though you’re only just now beginning your ninth month outside of me. I’m putting the clothes you’ve outgrown in a bag in your closet. It’s a big yellow bag they gave me at the hospital when I had you, a space to put all the personal effects of my pregnancy. Now it holds the footie pajamas I can’t pretend you can still wear. My organized self used to like cleaning out your drawers of the clothes you had outgrown, but now it makes me sad. Just one more night in your tiny green pajamas? Just one more morning with a long sleepy nursing session?

No, you have places to be and toilets to inspect. I don’t blame you for it, but I am already missing the girl you were this morning, only a few minutes ago. Yet I adore the girl you are now. You are beckoning me forward and holding my hand as I become the mom you need me to be, all while I hold you up right back.

All about the paci

Is it possibly that I’ve never put a picture of C in the bath tub on the blog? Oversight remedied.

We finally found the best remedy for achy teething gums: partially frozen zucchini.

This is the one and only outfit I bought for her before she was born. Good purchase.

She loves her blanket forts.

The magic of a blanket fort.

Time to lower the mattress.

The Other Side: Notes on the Seventh Month

Posted on November 7, 2012 by The Waiting

I am the parent of a seven month old child. This wallops me every time I think about it.

My seven month old child. B and I commonly refer to the summer months as “when she was a baby.” She’s clearly a middle schooler now that it’s fall.

Babies are a bigger deal than we give them credit for. Things we take for granted – feeding ourselves, our ability to put ourselves back to sleep when we wake in the middle of the night, and spacial awareness – are things that pose big challenges to them every day. Luckily, since they haven’t acquired the concept of giving up, they just keep on keepin’ on until they master these skills. It’s pretty admirable. Sometimes I wish I were a baby because I’d be learning new stuff every day. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo (I’m doing NaNoWriDecade), but if I told C to, she’d probably crank out a book. No promises that it would be all that good, but she’d give it the ol’ college try.

So! On with C’s newly acquired skills. This may be a long post. Heh.

First off, crawling. Crawling like a mofo. But you know this. C has places to go and dust bunnies to ingest, so she’s a busy girl. She can also sit up by herself completely unassisted.

The monster under the crib.

Napping has gotten a lot better. Although there are no hard and fast times that she will conk out each day, she has improved about 1000% in falling asleep for naps without the bottle. I will just put her in her swing – and POOF! – within about eight minutes she will usually fall asleep all by herself. (Running the vacuum doesn’t hurt, though). I’m calling Harvard on this one. She had a bit of sleep regression during the last week of October with the onset of all her new skills.

Since she was wearing a brown boyish onesie, I decided to put a ribbon on her head so people would know she was a girl when we went out. So when we took the ribbon off, her hair did this. LOL.

It was bound to happen eventually, but it looks like she has finally gotten sick. This is likely because she puts everything in her mouth and sucks her thumb*. But this morning when I was changing her, I noticed little splotches all over her torso. Thankfully, Ashley posted last month about similar symptoms in her daughter Sonia, and so I’m pretty sure C has come down with Roseola. Pretty yuck, but the moral to this whole story is that it pays to read blogs of people whose kids are a couple steps ahead of yours because when your kid finally comes down with something, you freak out a lot less. She’ll be OK.

*I was considering giving the thumb sucking item its own whole paragraph, not because it troubles me, but because it’s so cute. It’s the little things.

I may have written about this in the past, but I’m now going officially on the record saying that breastfeeding proper is pretty much over. She will nurse for about 15 minutes in the morning, but lately she’s been taking to biting and this is no bueno. I pump throughout the day so she is still getting breastmilk, but I’m not going to lie: I’m kind of over it. Since we’ve made it this long, though, I figure we’ll go for five more months. Famous last words. She’s a big fan of eating otherwise, although she’s not really at the point yet where she can feed herself her little baby crackers. She mostly just holds them in her fists where they then melt. I usually find them still in her hands 30 minutes later. Yum.

Her babbling is getting more and more defined each day. I love to hear her little coos and da-da-DAs. No ma-ma-MAs yet. She’s making me hold out. That’s OK, though. We have an understanding.

She loves her routines and we do too, but she really enjoys being out and about with us. We went to Raleigh last weekend to meet up with Kelly from Excitement on the Side and her kids*, and she just hung out in B’s lap the entire time and enjoyed herself. At some point, she became a baby who could do this! It’s no small thing.

*There will be a post or seven about this. The hangoutage was as awesome as you think.

A baby after her parents’ hearts

Happy seven months to our sweet girl! We love her so, so much. I could think of a more pithy and poetic way to describe my love for her but she’s exhausted me too much. So let’s just reduce it down:

Mommy=smitten

Baby=perfect

The Other Side: Notes on the Fifth Month

Posted on September 3, 2012 by The Waiting

Full disclosure: this is the first The Other Side post that I have been truly giddy to share. Miss C is on fire, y’all. She is doing so much stuff that I can’t even handle it. Everyday is packed with new and fun things with her, so let’s get down to it.

First, the faces. With age comes the ability to be more expressive and to explore the ways she can contort her little mug. She likes to stretch her face around and clamp down her jaw a lot (especially when her gums are swollen). One of her more hilarious faces is the one we have dubbed “the Serious Cat” because it is reminiscent of the LOLcats picture:

…I know, it’s not an exact match, but just allow us to dork-out about our baby. She also sometimes looks like Winston Churchill when she sleeps:

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Her coordination is really developing as well. She has taken to holding the bottle once she’s gotten enough of it to fill her stomach. It’s her hobby. She also really likes to grab at my hair and my glasses, which would be annoying if she hadn’t complete endeared herself to me with every little thing she does. She likes to open and close her hands when she explores the world around her. Seeing her do this is just one of those things that inexplicably melts my heart. Her little inquisitive movements are just so precious and contented.

And her feet. Oh my, her feet. She grabs at them with her hands and chews on them. B thinks it’s funny/gross that she sucks on her toes, but I like to remind him that since she’s not walking, it’s actually way less disgusting for her to chew on her feet than it is for her to do the same thing with her hands.

She is officially a roller! She rolled over by herself when she was about sixteen weeks, but then we didn’t get any repeat performances for about 2 1/2 weeks. Then all of a sudden, everything just clicked for her. And she rolled. And rolled. And rolled. And why stop? She loves her new mobility, and now it’s time to start baby-proofing the apartment because she won’t be slowing down any time soon. Or ever. She can’t yet sit up all by herself without the Bumbo seat, but she does love for us to hold her up by her arms so she can stand. She’s really good at locking her knees and “supporting” herself.

OK, what else, what else? OH! OH EM GEE I swear she said “mama” a week ago. It was likely just her getting upset and saying “ma” twice in a row, but it was still the sweetest sound I have ever heard. Ever. She was playing in her playpen with me next to her in a chair, and I left for a second to go to the bathroom. She got upset because she didn’t know where I was, and that’s when she said it. Again, likely not a bona fide “mama” utterance because she won’t be truly verbal for some time, but I’ll take what I can get.

She’s not a huge fan of Go, Dog, Go! yet, but if she’s anything like me it’ll grow on her because I am obsessed with it.

She is becoming quite a child of the world with her “hobbies” and traveling. She really enjoys reading books with me; it’s part of her bedtime routine but we also read throughout the day.

Does she have favorite book? Erm, maybe? We’ve mostly been cycling through books I loved as a kid so she can be able to emulate my greatness, so that means lots of Dr. Seuss and PD Eastman books. Hop On Pop is waaaaaay more hilarious than I remember it. To date, her most exciting outings are to the library. Last time she went I thought she was going to lose it. She was shrieking with glee the entire time we were there. She also likes the park and usually falls asleep when I wheel her in her stroller over the gravel. She attended her very first birthday party this past month of her friend* A, who turned one. Still not a huge fan of taking her to the store. Mama’s got to have her private time with her lover, Target. B stays with her at home when I go and get the shopping done.

*It always cracks me up when people say their babies are “friends.” Yeah, more like I’m friends with A’s mom. C likely doesn’t even know A exists.

All dolled up for A’s first birthday

Things are not easy all the time, but the overwhelming consensus of the family can be neatly summarized with a question B asks me daily now:

“Is it just me or is she the most awesome, happiest baby, ever?”

It’s not just him. Miss C is a treasure. Every day I look at this child we created and I swell with pride and love.

*****

The Shotgun Fetus is now a Shotgun Baby! Congratulations to Atticus and his mom and dad! Now only Jells is left and then our plan for blogging baby world domination will go into effect.

*****

And last but not least, major props goes out to everyone who helped me on my quest to be featured on A Clown on Fire‘s blogroll. You guys are awesome. Happy news! The Waiting made it on! All your checks are in the mail. Thanks to l’Eric for making this fun contest happen.

Miss C Emulates Gregor Samsa

Posted on May 16, 2012 by The Waiting

Last night I had a bad dream. The sad thing about it is that I know that it will eventually be real.

In my dream I awoke like I do most mornings around 5:30 or 6 and went to the baby. In my dream, though, she wasn’t a little lump swaddled and sweetly sleeping in her bassinet. Over night she had grown from her current six week old state. She was at least 35 pounds and three feet tall. Her face had filled out; it was longer, more mature. Her hair was long and brown, her current soft dusting of hair replaced by brushable locks.

I pulled her out to feed her. My back ached at the strain of the lift that is normally so effortless. She wiggled out of my arms and promptly began toddling across the room. I didn’t know whether to feel proud that my baby was walking or horrified that she had acquired this skill overnight.

I went to B to show him what had happened and what she was doing. When we both returned to her, not only was she still walking, but she had somehow procured some of my clothes and had put them on. I was mortified. I told B to call the pediatrician. Something was very wrong. Babies shouldn’t grow like this.

He was calm. “This is only natural,” he replied.

I collected her in my arms and rocked her like a newborn. She struggled and ran off to play.

At that point I woke myself because I couldn’t stand it anymore.

This is probably the most easily interpreted dream I’ve ever had. This,

has turned into this,

in a matter of six weeks. And she’s not stopping for anyone.

It’s beautifully heartbreaking.

The Waiting

Turns out, it's not the hardest part.

Tag Archives: milestones