This Boo is Made for Walking

ILA WALKED! On Her Own.

She actually did it last Saturday, but I sort of cheated. I was kind of spotting her from the back, and then I let go. She walked to the couch. I hollered and cheered. Then, she did it again for Kiyomi...after which she showed no interest in it for a week. Then, today, she did some shuttle runs between Kiyomi and I for the better part of 15 minutes. It was cute. We kept clapping and cheering. She kept going back and forth with a very pleased look on her face. It was cute. I still am not sure when she will really want to walk from one place to another...that is, without a squealing, excited adult at each end to encourage her.

In other news, I'm some kind of immunological cripple. This must be why I've had a cold every month for the last six months. Not constantly sick; just sick, better, sick again, better, over and over. Well, "over and over" for a total of six. That is too many over-and-over's.

I blame breastfeeding.

I love breastfeeding, but still Ila is sapping my life force via my mammary glands. Fortunately, this means that she has only gotten sick a couple times - thanks to my amazing life force. (If I'm not going to benefit from it, I guess I'm happy Ila is.) Unfortunately, Ila got it this time, and she's miserable.

So, it is particularly remarkable she wanted to totter back and forth on her little feet today for so long. While she did do this little bit of exercise, she has mostly wanted to cry and look like a little sad, wilted bean. Poor little babe. So, in the interest of one sick little walker, I am making this brief.

She walked! Woo-hoo!!

Yes and No

So, yesterday was our first Mother's Day. Ila and I woke up all snuggled together, then she nursed for a while, then snuggled and slept more. It was pretty heavenly. I can't believe she is almost one! I look forward to seeing her as a toddler, a little kid and a big kid, even a teenager, and beyond...but moments like yesterday morning really bring home how sweet it is to have a baby around, with their funny little faces, chubby hands and feet and all the speaking-in-tongues babbling.

It's nice to remember how adorable and fascinating she is right now because we are also having, concurrent with all this cuteness, a horrible time sleeping. Ugh. She has been up for over 3 hours in the middle of the night several times in the last week. At those moments, I look forward to the time that she is sleeping soundly through the night - fine, fast forward five years, I don't care! I don't care if I miss all kinds of amazing things, just give me some solid sleep! Then, she's a cuddly little darling in the morning...and I think, ah well. Who needs sleep?

She is so cute.

Seriously, I walk around all day long saying, "You are SO cute" and feeling it with my whole being, in an acute, almost painful sort of way. I'm worried about the time I have to stop remarking on her adorableness out loud. Something tells me that it is not good for a child to hear this as a constant refrain. This is unfortunate; however, I don't want to be one of those ridiculous parents that are too clingy and affectionate and gushy, whose children shake them off constantly with embarrassment, whose praise means nothing because it not really earned and so often repeated. I'm just going to enjoy this time that I can kiss her on the cheek and tell her she's lovely every five minutes. Hopefully I'll be able to break this habit...

Developmentally this is an exciting time. She's not saying any words, and I have been really looking forward to that...so I've been a bit disappointed. Actually, it's more that I've been wondering what I'm doing wrong - am I not talking to her enough or not in the best, most speech inducing way? And, she wasn't doing any signs - which we've been consistently using with her for months. So, naturally, this reinforced my certainty that she is either a) never going to be able to communicate OR b) crippled by my obvious ineptitude in instructing various forms of speech. Fortunately for all of us, she started signing this last week! Woo-hoo! She started with "all done" and "eat." These were shortly followed by "potty." Mostly, she signs this back at us in response to our signs or questions.



Since she was signing with some reliability, I decided to teach her to sign for "book" because she loves to be read to so much. This sign is easy; you open your two hands like a book. She picked it up right away...and it is the most bizarre of her signs. She's turned it into this exaggerated shrug with some head thrusting, usually accompanied by a bizarre smile/grimace. This is the sign that she does most frequently without any prompting. Actually, it's probably tied with "eat." An eater and a reader. I can live with that. I am curious to see when she starts using "potty" of her own volition. She goes on it when we put her on, but it will be very exciting when she starts actually indicating when she needs to go herself!



Beyond signing, she's making all kinds of little connections. The other day she had a shirt with a sheep on it. When we got to a page in a book we were reading with a sheep, she looked down at her shirt and pointed to the sheep. What was so exciting about this is that I've never mentioned that this creature on her shirt is a sheep. Also, the book we were reading does not mention the sheep by name; it's just one of the little animals cavorting in a barnyard. I thought this was pretty amazing. Upon reflecting on this, I think Kiyomi has called it the animal on her shirt a sheep, but still, I was pretty impressed.

Similarly, she is definitely making the connection between shaking the head meaning "no" and nodding meaning "yes." I didn't even realize I nodded my head much for yes, but I must because the other day when I was saying, "hmm-mm" as a yes, she started nodding. Funny. As far as shaking her head, she's been doing that for a while, but not really as a sign for no. She used to just enjoy shaking her head back and forth; I think because it felt good? But recently she has connected it to the word no, which is not a word she likes to hear, incidentally. When I say it, her face gets all scrunched up and she starts crying. Sometimes really crying, not like just a fake sob or two, like someone kicked her in the shin crying.

For example, the other day, she was standing at my knees while I sat on the couch. We were looking at a book or a toy and she leaned over and started to bite my knee, sort of idly. She's getting some new teeth, so she enjoys chomping down on most everything. I said, "No, Ila, please don't bite my knee." Well, she shook her head, "no," as I said no, then the waterworks started. I didn't even say it in an angry or upset manner, and I was already adding, "You can kiss my knee or pat my knee." (Which, if you really want to bite someone, I'm not sure kissing and patting afford the same pleasure, but I like to give options.) Anyway, she was sad for a moment, but we were still playing so the sadness was forgotten. After a minute or two she leaned over and gave my knee a lick - I think that's her version of a kiss. I said "thank you" and "oh, how nice - you gave mama's knee a kiss" and a few minutes later she did it again.

This whole incident was pretty interesting. It's sort of settling this notion I have that "no" doesn't always work that well. We're not big users of the word "no" - though when she consciously bites or kicks and it hurts, I pretty instinctively say no. The main "no" arena has been around throwing food on the ground. We've been trying to offer the option to put the food on the table or give it to us if she doesn't want it. We've said, "no, Ila don't throw the food on the floor." And that pretty much crushes her little spirit entirely. Then, she just throws food on the ground and shakes her head "no" while doing it. Nice.

Now, I'm not someone who thinks you should never use the word no. Also, I know that tears don't indicate being truly, deeply wounded. But, she has such a visceral reaction to the word no, I've decided that maybe just giving her the better options in whatever situation over and over and reinforcing and recognizing the desired behavior is probably more effective than using such a charged word with much frequency. I know, probably a gajillion developmental psychologists are rolling their eyes at the banality of my realization, but I'm living it, baby. And as my yogi tea recently informed me, "Wisdom becomes knowledge when it is personal experience."

Anyway, all these little gestures seem sort of small when I write them out, but when most of your child's life has been spent as a little grub that can't talk or indicate or express connections in anyway, it's pretty surprising when these sorts of thing start happening. She's growing up into a real, live, actual little person! Pretty remarkable.

Upright

Ila stood on her own! She loves to toddle around clutching tightly to two hands or the furniture - she prefers hands as her exploration is not restricted to furnitured areas. Today, I let go of her hands for a moment - she can lean back on my legs - and she just kept standing there! No swaying, no reaching for anything. Just standing! Then, twice after this, she chose to take her hands off her balancing object - a chair and a table. She had this thrilled, sort of shocked look on her face with just a dash of fear, exciting fear, mind you. Wow! I can sort of glimpse her walking in my imagination. I know she'll walk on a purely theoretical level, but today it seemed like a real possibility!

What a day! It has been a very sweet day (among other things, Ila took a freakisly long nap). This morning she started rustling around and obviously wanted to nurse at about 6 o'clock. I got us all snuggled up and positioned...and Ila proceeded to latch on and nurse for about 20 seconds, then pulled off and put her pacifier in her mouth for about 5 seconds, then back to the breast for 20 seconds, then back to the pacifier...back and forth for about 10 minutes. She did this all in a closed-eye, semi-conscious daze, like she was getting stoned off all the snuggle-y, sucking action. I, however, was wide awake after 30 rounds of this and decided to plop her pacifier in and pull her up onto my chest. She settled into a light sleep for another half an hour, sprawled across my body. It was so absolutely lovely and blissful that I didn't even mind how much I really wanted to still be sleeping.

Later, after the standing action, I put Ila down for her second nap. Today is my brother's birthday, and I was thinking about him as she fell asleep. I have a lot of guilt about not being a kind big sister when we were growing up. Sometimes I think this has something to do with my parents; sometimes it seems like it's just about me. Specifically, I always wonder how I could have been a better sister - maybe it's something my mother did, or something my father didn't do, or something flawed about me that made me stingy and ungenerous with my brother. But, I am always looking back thinking my sibling behavior was problematic and wondering how it went wrong. I think about this because, if Ila has a sibling, I'd like the two of them to love each other without these feelings of guilt.

Well, it just occurred to me today - after three decades as a sister - that maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe nobody did anything wrong, maybe I was a pretty normal big sister, but there is something in me that always wants to rake myself over the coals for past behavior and choices. It's such a revolution to think that, in fact, this isn't about who I was as a kid but about who I am today: I am someone who wants to fix things, even long ago things that were (and still are) totally out of my control, someone with a strong tendency to be a bit too critical of myself. Also, a bit of a rigid perfectionist. Now, instead of thinking about ways I can make Ila a perfect older sibling (it has now become clear that was what I was doing), I will focus on trying to help her be kind to herself. Maybe then she will be okay with who she is, what she needs, and we may just foster a love of her own little self that can overflow into kindness and compassion for any other little beings she shares a home with. There's a thought.

Infant Achievements

There is certainly a stereotype that parents, even of little grub-like infants, are immensely, and perhaps irrationally, proud of their children's accomplishments. Like the parent that is proud of their baby's poops or burps or slobbery faces. So, there is this stereotype, but are these parents real? I find that all of Ila's goofy baby behaviors are entrancing and lovely to me...but I don't feel proud exactly. I don't feel that Ila is prodigiously talented in any way at this point. I think she seems pretty normal - she hasn't really done anything early. She may even do somethings late.

I don't particularly care, but, occasionally, when I comment that she will possibly be a late walker or a late talker, some people try to put me at ease, to supposedly assuage my worries that my child will not be fine. This, naturally, irritates me. I have loathed fellow humans for little more than a stray comment to me to "calm down" when I'm detailing some neurosis or worry of mine (usually I'm doing this in an obviously comedic way). When confronted with these people, I first silently mark their names down in my mental Little Black Book of Things Never to be Forgiven, then tell myself it's just that I speak with great feeling and clarity...and some poor fools mistake that for actual hysteria. One woman who I cannot find it in my heart to like told me that I'm "too much in my head" after hearing my birth story. If I was a different person, I may have punched her. Of course I'm too much in my head! That is a private struggle for me to diffuse publicly with amusing anecdotes. I do not want any Ms. Obvious Observation's patronizing comments.

So, apparently, I have a hang up about this sort of thing. (Okay, fine, it's all part of some control issue of mine. And my dislike of these people is really about me and my insecurities, blah blah blah.) Needless to say, I don't take these unasked for assurances about Ila with anything resembling grace. But it does lead me to wonder if this whole idea that parents are so intensely invested in their infant's "accomplishments" is a bit blown out of proportion. Or maybe it's not pride, maybe we - parents - are just floored by the amazing, though ordinary, process of watching a new little being develop. It is pretty remarkable to be part of.

Still, I find - happily - that I feel all I really care about is that Ila is healthy and seems to be growing along her own little curve. I mean, I am subject to fits of guilt that I am doing something wrong, but I am not particularly invested in thinking Ila is particularly great or speedy in acquiring some new skill. In other words, I sometimes worry that I will handicap her from regular development, but I don't really think much about whether she is very advanced developmentally.

I hear a lot of discussion of children doing this or that early. People do seem to care about this. Or maybe I just focus in on it because I am surprised to discover that I don't care. Let's be honest, I am worried that I will be one of those pusher parents who needs their child to be gifted, brilliant, amazing. I hope I'm not. I've developed an allergy to these parents after being a teacher. I want to encourage, but I don't want to suffocate my child with the need to fulfill some weird expectations of mine. Or maybe I'm just sort of feeling self-congratulatory that I - thus far - don't feel that I have too much ego involvement in her "achievements." We'll see what happens when she starts school; maybe I'll become a real honor-parent menace.

Right now, I'm content just picking up on the little glimmers of Ila's personality shining through, just the ordinary miracles of having a little baby around. She is, for instance, turning into a very affectionate little girl. She has started leaning in when she wants you to kiss her on the lips and then doing some bizarre almost-smacking, open mouth sort of smooch. Very cute and a bit wet. She loves to snuggle at night, which means that she bulldozes her little body into mine. Always mine; not Kiyomi's. I'm sort of excited for the time she starts spreading that insomnia-inducing love around.

Also, she seems to be a cautious little kid. When she loses her balance while cruising around the edges of the furniture, she looks alarmed and sometimes whimpers a bit, looking back at me for reassurance. Some kids seem to be pretty indifferent to getting a bit knocked about in their pursuit of movement. She's actually getting better at falling onto her butt while tottering around the furniture, a skill that she definitely has had to work on. I am watching curiously to see if she is walking in the next month. It could happen, but who knows? And, fortunately, I am not worried either way, so please don't tell me to calm down.

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...

Community

On Sunday, we had a bunch of families over, several of whom were in our birth classes. We've been getting together regularly, and various smaller groups of us also meet up for walks or going to the park, etc. This is, hands down, one the most important pieces of advice I have to give to new moms. Don't isolate yourself.

A friend just sent me a newspaper article yesterday about having a baby and finding yourself suddenly in the barren, lonely landscape of the 1950s middle class, white gender divide. It is truly a shocker for current day women to suddenly find their universe shrunk to the size that this tiny, dependent, not terribly interesting little baby occupies - everything else seems to vanish. And, the woman writing the article explains, compared to other advances women in Western countries have made, domestic tasks, especially those surrounding child rearing, are still startlingly unequal. This reminded me of a book I read a number of years ago, Wifework, which was great in the sense that is was fascinating...and horrible in the sense that it was pretty depressing look at what marriage and motherhood really mean for women...

On a societal level, this problem is complicated...and overwhelming. That doesn't mean, of course, that we should ignore it, but, I have to think - some of the time - on a more individual level. Like how am I, this person, right here, right now, living in a country with no mandated paid maternity/paternity leave, without adequately funded childcare options, going to negotiate motherhood in a way that is, overall, positive? Well, creating a community is crucial to this. I know I'm not the first to say this, but the nuclear family sucks. Maybe it takes a village to raise a child partially because the parents go crazy on their own? So, I say to all considering motherhood - think of it as an opportunity to grow your community and connect with others. It's still hard but so much better. I love so many, many mothers I have met this year. They have, undoubtedly, helped me continue to feel connected, positive and human.

On Sunday, I captured a little video of Ila with two girls who were born on the same day as her last year. A couple from our birth group had their daughter at the birth center the same night...and it's something very sweet to share. Though, at 4 AM when I could hear new little baby Charlotte crying, I felt quite jealous that it wasn't my baby that had finally come...and that I had more labor to get through. The other couple, who we know through the university, was giving birth at the hospital I had to transfer to because my placenta didn't deliver. Small world. Anyway, here the girls are...sort of sharing the little interactive table...



I am also lucky to have my mother around - lucky also to like having my mother around! Anyway, she is a bit crazy about Ila. I'm not sure how she would put it, in her more guarded way, but she totally loves playing with Ila and enjoying her new talents, like dancing and clapping.

Judgy Judge Judge Crawly Crawl Crawl

Recently, I was getting to be a bit smug about the whole sleeping thing. Ila was still waking up a couple times a night, but she was back asleep so quickly. And, she's in bed with me, so it's not that big a deal. Roll over, nurse, go back to sleep. Okay, I was beyond smug. I was really starting to become very retroactively judgmental about my early days with Ila. The sleep issue was the worst between 3 and 6 months for us...and I started looking back and thinking maybe it was me; maybe she has always been a fairly decent sleeper - you know, I was all uptight, tightly wound, not accepting this new world of sleep and failing to move through the whole experience without resistance. It was me.

Then last week happened: No; the earlier struggles with sleep were not because of me. It was Ila. She was going through a crappy sleeping phase. Moreover, I haven't grown and become all zen and accepting. Nope. Things just got better. I know this because last week she woke and stayed awake for an hour and cried and woke and stayed awake for two hours and nursed five times in a night and cried and stayed awake. And guess what? I was not all accepting and mature. I was pretty damn grumpy about the whole thing.

What I want to know is why I feel the need to look back and edit or judge or make sense of what happened in the past in some way that is totally dependent on my current experience. Change is just so hard to wrap my head around. It is, I suppose, not unique to me. It is a deeply human impulse to try and create a narrative that is stable. Even constructing a narrative is ultimately sort of questionable vis-a-vis reality...which is not really a narrative at all.

Similarly, the idea of "progress" for babies is totally problematic. I mean, Ila does a lot of experimenting in movement, vocalizing, eating, sleeping...that don't necessarily lead to anything. I guess in general she is progressing in development overall, but it's not a clear step-by-step process. It's full of weird behaviors that she does for a day or three...and then drops. Also, she's just suddenly do things without any prior "practice." I think this is why a lot of folks get so irritated by the milestones.

For example, ;last week, she was crossing her first two fingers on each hand constantly. Now she is done with that. Instead, this week, she claps her hands and throws her hands up over her head like a gymnast triumphantly completing her routine. She loves it if you do it as well. Then, she'll do the whole thing over again. Actually, this week, she's generally into mimicry. This was supposed to start a long time ago according to the milestones, but, as noted earlier, that pretty much means nothing. She will mimic syllables (especially "ma ma ma ma," which I particularly like to encourage), clapping, and her Victory Arms gesture. But who knows? She may stop all this tomorrow and never do it again. Looking for a real clear progression is totally absurd (...which is probably a life lesson from all this that I should try to apply to the rest of my experiences, but we'll see how far that goes).

In regards to the fallacy of "progress," Ila can crawl...but she doesn't really want to. She scoots on her butt a little or tries to stand up and climb on things rather than hang out on her hands and knees. Now, she could just never really crawl as a means of getting around or all this scrabbling and clambering around could lead to crawling. It's very fascinating how unpredictable and individual all this development is.

I had been thinking this was all proto-crawling and that she couldn't actually crawl yet. Eventually, this little crawling-like movements would lead - Ta Da! - to "real" crawling. Well, then I happened to leave her pacifier on one end of the bed and set her down on the other. Suddenly, she was crawling. She can do a lot when properly motivated, apparently. Still she has no interest in crawling out in the world. She may never really like to crawl. Who can say?

At any rate, this is a really exciting period. She loves to pick up toys, figure them out, toss 'em down, scoot around, stand up, do her bouncy little dance to songs she likes, babble and screech, play hide and seek or "chase the mama," get thrown up in the air dangerously close to the ceiling, read, eat books, eat paper in general, eat in general. She's pretty fabulous.