Eyeball.

I am surprised at the whole new world of guilt that being a mother opens. I expected some guilt, I guess. If she falls down or hurts herself, I expected to feel in some way responsible. Even such vague feelings of guilt seemed as worries that I will screw up my child, etc. seemed possible. But, I didn't think I would have this constant, subterranean sense that I am just not being present enough, just not being...selfless enough. Really. I feel catholic. And like I totally absorbed crazy expectations of women around parenting that are...well, crazy. These expectations are, on a conscious, rational level, highly problematic. Yet, I find myself thinking that I need to sacrifice more. I catch myself thinking that I'm just not lavishing enough attention, focus or interaction on Ila.

For instance, I feel like I should be talking to her more - in "developmentally appropriate" ways, you know, like asking lots of questions, leaving a little wait time even though there's about .01% chance she's going to answer me any time soon. I feel like I should be more actively trying to stimulate her, educate and enrich her world in ways a baby would appreciate.

I'm not sure why my mind has glommed onto talking more to Ila, but this is where some of my worry goes, especially since around now is when some babies say their first word. Ila has "ma-ma-ma-ed" quite a bit, but it generally seems not to correspond to me, the Mama in question. Other than that, she's not particularly talkative. In fact, in the last week, she's stopped even making random syllable sounds as much as she was recently. This is totally fine, says my rational mind. My bizarre guilty mama brain says, Maybe you should talk to her more; maybe she just doesn't get enough encouragement from you. The guilty mind seems to win out. Fortunately yesterday my rational brain found something to bolster its fairly weak argument. Movement! Ila is so focused on movement that she doesn't have the attention to put toward vocalizing lately.

As soon as I thought this yesterday, she also started babbling more. Or, she had been babbling the same amount, and I am just a paranoid worrier making up scenarios to create turmoil in my mind that are not based on actual, objective fact? That's fairly likely. Last night, in particular, she was mimicking sounds. We were at some friends' house - they have a little girl who is almost 2 - and we were all saying the word "eyeball." Why? Because someone said it and then the little girl repeated it. For some reason, it's pretty funny when a little kid says "eyeball," so we all were saying eyeball. Then, Ila said "ay-ba" right in time for her turn in the eyeball action. We all stopped, surprised. Our friend said, "Ah! Her first word! Eyeball. Write it down!" Hmmm. Eyeball? Really?

For me, all of this points to the necessity of not be isolated with my baby. It's too easy to get trapped in some netherworld of irrational guilt. Friends, family members, sane, non-sleep deprived folks help remind me that some of my expectations of myself are ridiculous. This is good to remember because, though Ila isn't saying words (other than eyeball, of course), she is doing all kinds of fun, new things, and it's good to not miss them because I'm focused on what I'm not doing for her. She started waving this week, for example. This baffled me because I never wave bye-bye (that is also a source of some guilty, "Ah! I should be instilling good bye-bye waving skills in my child!"). Well, I guess Kiyomi and Ila wave bye bye to the poops in the potty and Ila has branched out from "bye bye, poop" waving to "bye bye, people" waving. Pretty cool.

Other than that, she also experiments with random noises and behaviors, as babies are wont to do. These are some of the strangest and funniest parts of having a baby. Where does she get these ideas? Who knows...