Clueless

I have come to the conclusion I am clueless as a mother. Until now, until this point in my journey, there has always been an obvious next step. She's hungry - feed her. She's tired - put her to sleep. She's wet - change her. She's teething - soothe her. I have always felt a calling on my life to sustain human life and give the person/people in my charge the best quality life I have to offer them. You could say I'm in the business of keeping people alive until they reach their appointed time to die, then helping them make the crossing over as peacefully as is in my power to do so. I have never in my life encountered a situation where I have felt helpless or without direction in this area of my expertise until this week.

Lilah will be 24 weeks old on the 8th of September. She's nearly 6 months old now, has nearly doubled her birth weight, has a tooth, is crawling, and has met all her milestones. I realize now that's what I was concerned with - assisting her to meet her milestones. There's nothing wrong with that, since she is a somewhat advanced, if not right on schedule, baby. This week, however, I came to the startling realization that what was once a small bundle of raw emotion was now a cognitive person. Lilah's first developmental task according to Erikson (the psychologist I most closely adhere to) is Trust vs. Mistrust.

"first stage which corresponds to Freud's oral stage centers around the infant's basic needs being met by the parents. The infant depends on the parents, especially the mother, for food, sustenance, and comfort. The child's relative understanding of world and society come from the parents and their interaction with the child. If the parents expose the child to warmth, regularity, and dependable affection, the infant's view of the world will be one of trust. Should the parents fail to provide a secure environment and to meet the child's basic need a sense of mistrust will result."

That was hugely important to me. For at least the first 6 months of her life, if was my entire job as a mother in a nutshell to provide that safety and security that would not only shape my relationship with my daughter in the future, but also dictate how she would view the whole world her entire life! This week, I realized she had mastered that. She knew when her parents or grandparents had her, she was safe, and therefore happy and willing to explore the world around her. With that exploration has come a new challenge that I feel I am unprepared for as a mother - autonomy.

Lilah has a routine that we stick pretty closely to. She goes to bed, eats, naps, and plays at specific times of the day. This happened naturally, and she's thrived on routine and habit. Now, she's started exerting her will more and more each day. I put her in her swing to take her nap as usual, and she looks straight at me and whines (not cries, just whines) until she gets picked up. Sometimes she even manages a tear or two. It never occurred to me it was a behavior issue until I watched her smile even as I was reaching for her. Now, I know you can't spoil a baby with love, cuddles, or security. If she was in need of reassurance and needed a snuggle from Mama, that's perfectly all right and what I'm here for. But after cuddling her and putting her back in her swing, the whining picks up again. It only stopped when I A) Let her lie on the couch next to me and hold my leg for her nap or B) Put her upstairs in her crib. If I kept her on the couch, she slept poorly and mostly played. If I put her in her crib, she understood it was nap time and went down with barely another noise. It's easier for me to keep her on the couch so I can pay bills, fold laundry, or do whatever else needs to be done. It's better for her if I take the time to put her up in her crib and tuck her in.

Situations just like that have popped up more and more. She knows what she needs (sleep, playtime, food, etc.) and she knows how her routine dictates the need will be met (part of the trust she's mastered already). But she's pushing the limits. I can see it in her eyes, too. She'll look straight at me and whine for a variation, something - from her purely emotional point of view - more desirable. She doesn't do it when Dano is alone with her. He was home one morning and watched her do it and watched me give in to her. "Why do you give in? Why don't you put her in her crib?" "It's easier..." I was horrified to hear myself say. I have since stopped doing it and putting her in her crib to nap. She's too young to be "naughty", or to push limits to get on her parents' nerves. She's just learning cause and effect. "If I push the belly of my musical seahorse, he sings and lights up!" In the same way, she's learning, "If I make these awful noises at Mama, she picks me up and I don't have to put myself to sleep in my crib!" This is just the next stage in her ongoing exploration of the world around her. It's just a stage I'm not entirely ready for, and one in which I highly doubt my own abilities.

Slow down already!

Today I was looking over pictures of Lilah's first month of being alive and wondering, "Who was that alien little creature we brought home?" She was tiny and helpless, and never made a peep. Somehow, that baby went away, and was replaced by a big girl who sits up, crawls and rolls around, and talks to us every day. She attracts people to her like moths to a flame.
"How old is she?"
"Isn't she a doll!"
"Is she a good baby?"
"Does she sleep through the night?"
"What's her name?"
Those are the usual ones I get. She'll never remember how many times I answer them every time I take her out. All she knows now is that humanity, it would seem, was created to pay homage to this tiny being. It's absurd, the amount of fawning and adoration she's subjected to, and she just soaks it all up. If every person on earth were a separate planet, they've spent the past 5 months revolving around a tiny, baby-shaped Sun.

Where did the summer go?

I've been telling myself to blog for a week now, before I get so behind I forget something. Every time I sit down to do it, I think to myself, "I could spend time on the computer, or play with Lilah" and I always end up playing with Lilah. She's sleeping now, so it seems like the opportune time to do it.

She's eating cereal before bed nearly every night now, because she was waking up famished in the middle of the night. She sleeps in her crib every night, as well. Mostly it works out well. She always wakes up around 7 and realizes there are toys within reach, so one of us has to drag our lazy butts out of bed and retrieve her. Whenever it's my turn, I find a grinning baby with chubby arms wrapped around one of her favorite stuffed animals in place of the peaceful, sleeping baby I had left in the crib 8 hours earlier.

She loves to experiment with her voice. She always seems surprised at what weird and bizarre noises she can make come out of her own mouth. Her first sounds were just squawks, which evolved into "conversations" with us. Then she learned she could screech like a hawk, and liked to wake us up that way. Then she taught herself to whisper. She sounded possessed. She would roll over to me and nurse in the morning after we got her from her crib, then roll over to Dano and proceed to grab his beard, smack his cheeks, or just grab both sides of his head and whisper menacingly until he woke up. Now she's moved on to the deeper range of her vocal cords. She sounds exactly like a mourning dove when she makes those sounds. Larry swears she said "Mama" when she was upset the other day. I think 5 months is still a little young for that.

She's crawling! It blows my mind to think about. A week ago, we could put her down on the floor and she'd have so much fun rolling around and playing with her toys. She'd occasionally give a half-hearted effort to scoot a few inches, but didn't seem too interested. About 3 days ago, she discovered that if she got her knees under her and her butt in the air, she could go about a foot if she pulled herself along with her arms outstretched in front of her. It was cute to watch her try. I guess I didn't realize she was getting better and better at it until last night. We were at Ann's and Larry's house, and Lilah was on a sheet on the floor (she likes to put fistfuls of dog hair in her mouth) and every time I looked up, she was off the sheet and headed somewhere else. We laughed at her the first few times, but then it became very clear: Lilah Rose Marie Alexander could crawl, and was very good at it. God help us all.

Where did July go?

I felt like I barely sat down one time last month. One day, we're hanging out with Max on July 4th eating Veggie Burgers, and the next day, I'm doing documentation at work and saying aloud, "Is it really 8-1? Are we sure?"

So much happened last month. We were busy every single weekend and many times throughout the week. We celebrated Lilah's first Independence Day with brownies and strawberry daiquiris. Even Max got a virgin one. We went to Pioneer Day fireworks and had a great weekend hanging out with Dano's high school best bud Brent (whew! That's a lot of B's!). We went hiking and had a cookout with Dano's cousin Sam and her little girl, Ada. Lilah loved her second cousin and they giggled together all evening. We picked my friend Bronson up from the airport and went to L'attitude for martinis and snacks. He spent the night, then we drove to Gay, MI to spend a day with his family there. While in Gay, we explored the ruins of an old iron ore mill, watched his kids play Wii, and had an awesome campfire on the beach. That same weekend was Hiawatha weekend, a traditional music festival. We ran into Mike Waite on a bus, where he held Lilah and had a few minutes of folk-bonding. She camped for the first time and did wonderfully. The weather went from 40s at night to 75 during the day. Lilah got the full hippie experience complete with songs around a campfire and her very first tie-dye dress! Thanks Grandpaman! She loved it. She got to play with her good friend Talula Ravani, and they both wore their tie-dye and played in a hammock. She got to see her cousins, Zedd and Ephraim, and met her second cousin Kelsey and her Uncle Chris and Aunt Karen for the very first time! The last weekend in July, we stayed with Max for the weekend again so Ann and Larry could camp and bike. It was mostly rainy, but we all went shopping and had a laid-back, good time.

What's Lilah been doing during all of this? She's been growing, mostly. She started boycotting bottles when I went back to work, so now and again she gets rice cereal, which she loves and devours. She now weighs 14 pounds even, and she's 24 1/2 inches long. She's more than met her milestones. She has the cutest belly laugh at inappropriate moments (like when Mama is talking to Daddy about "old people sex" at work), a smile that darn-near takes up her whole face, she can sit up nearly unassisted, and she rolls like a boss. She never stays where you put her anymore. She always ends up 5 feet away. She's also attempting to scoot across the floor by pushing with her toes. I have a feeling she'll be a mover early, this one. The doctor definitely thinks it's possible she's got a tooth trying to pop through, since she's a drooly mess and eats everything. She sucks on her fists until she gags. We were outside playing today and exploring nature, and she ate a flower. One minute she was looking thoughtfully at it, and the next minute it was gone. I nearly dropped her and started to search for the number to Poison Control when she made a face and spit it out again. I told her not to do that again and she grinned. She's very vocal and has a lot to say about the world around her. She'll go to anyone who wants her, and she's an absolute darling 90% of the time. That other 10%, well, it makes you very thankful for the 90%.