The more babies and parents we come into contact with, the stranger our small clan appears. I'm not sure if every husband gets up early to brew coffee for his inept wife prior to heading to class, but I doubt it. I'm also not convinced other husbands slip a 6 month old into bed with their wives so, when the baby wakes up, the wives don't have to go get them. Most recently, I haven't heard of any other girls my age (or any age, to be perfectly honest) who are aroused from sleep every morning by what sounds very much like the hissing of snakes, only to open her eyes to find a small, fat baby millimeters from her face, sticking her tongue out and hissing to wake her mama up.
That is what I experience every morning. Dano's alarm goes off (not at all abrasive, as it is an string quartet version of "In Keeping Secrets With Silent Earth: 3" by Coheed and Cambria) and he gets out of bed and gets ready quietly. He eases Lilah out of her crib and into the bed with me (sometimes she's awake and nurses before going back to bed, sometimes she's still out cold). He makes coffee and leaves a cup for me in the microwave. I have tried hundreds of times to make coffee. It always fails. I burn it, it's watery, too strong, I don't mix in the proper cream-to-sugar ratio, or the milk has turned. By some design of the gods, I am unable to make coffee, so my husband always leaves me a cup. He then steals quietly back into the bedroom, kisses me and says, "Your coffee's in the microwave. Love you, bye." I attempt to mutter a response, a thank you, and that I love him as well. He kisses Lilah, and is on his way.
Lilah and I sleep for another hour or two. She always wakes up first. She amuses herself as best she can by trying to get at the cat until Soup lets out a discontented croak (yes, my cat croaks) and stalks away. Lilah pulls at the covers, rolls around, and finally gets bored and wakes me up. She does this the same way every morning. She creeps up close to me and, when she's so close I can feel her breath on my face (or would be able to if I were conscious), she sticks out her tongue and hisses. It never ceases to frighten me out of a deep sleep. I don't know why she does it or how she learned it, but she does it very well. When my eyes snap open, I see two large blue/purple eyes and a grin containing exactly two teeth. The hissing only lasts until she knows I'm awake. If I roll over or close my eyes again, she proceeds to slap my face or claw me with her talons. She is, truly, a Wild Thing. Maurice Sendak would be so proud.
Speaking of Sendak, we are taking Lilah to see Where the Wild Things Are this Saturday. She's been going to movies with us since she was a month or two old. She never cried, and mostly slept. I went to see The Watchmen a few days before she was born, hoping the loud sounds and vibrations would scare her right on out. They didn't. We recently stopped taking her to adult movies. She still doesn't cry, but she's more restless and also noticed the screen. What purpose would giant, talking people serve if not to amuse her, and what kind of baby would she be if she didn't talk back to them? The people around us thought it was cute, but I didn't want to be "those people", so we stopped taking her. Mostly that means we stopped going to movies. This one should be fine, as it is a children's film anyway, and some interaction with the screen and over exuberance is to be expected. When I took my siblings to see Happy Feet in Imax 3D, there were random children of all shapes and sizes dancing in their seats along with Mumble the Penguin, yelling, singing, crying, throwing popcorn, and running up and down the aisles. I figure it will be fine to take her to this one. I'm sure I will cry. Something about kid movies makes me cry. I took Gracie to see Meet the Robinsons when she was 6. I was bawling halfway through and she looks at me with disgust and says, "Are you crying? WHY are you crying?" In my defense, the mother put her kid in a basket or box or something and left it on the steps of the orphanage. WHO DOES THAT? It was a kids' movie for crying out loud. What happened to Beauty and the Beast or, well I can't even say Bambi. Why must we indoctrinate death in a child's life so early? Why make abandonment, divorce, death, pain, and evil so prevalent? I'm not one for sheltering kids from reality, but couldn't they have gotten their point across without having a mother leave a baby on a doorstep? I cried at Lilo and Stitch as well. Parents dead, the older sister is raising the younger, and CPS is about to step in and take Lilo away. Come on!
Anyway, moving on, I'm hoping this will be a fun, adventurous film we can all enjoy. Dano and I grew up with the book, and now our child will grow up with the movie. Funny how times change.
