I was thinking the
other day as I put Paula to bed. It's what I do when she's snuggled next to me,
the lights are off, I've finished singing to her one or both of her two favorite
songs (Annie's Song by John Denver, or My Girl by the Temptations)
her hearing aids are out and she's chomping away on that bottle.
I remembered how
I used to go to sleep like that, too, nestled against Joel's side, my shoulder under
his arm, my cheek resting on his chest and my forehead just under his collarbone.
Just like Paula does with me, except for the bottle, and the singing. I can still
feel my blood pressure drop when I think about it. That was a great feeling, one
that I don't get to enjoy as often now that we have a kid and our bedtimes are at
least two hours apart most nights.
But that feeling
of falling asleep in the arms of the person who loves you the most, in the best
and safest place in the whole world, is something I'll never forget, or fail to
appreciate on the one or two nights a year that I get to have it now. I'm glad Paula
has it. And when I think about it that way, I'm in no hurry to move her out of our
room,
in spite of the fact that my little baby turned three today.
Yep, she's three.
A year ago she was just beginning to talk and couldn't say her name at all. She
relied completely on signing to get her meaning across. Abstract concepts, names
of people and things, complex communications involving more than one simple idea
- these all escaped her.
But so much has changed.
Now she's a pre-schooler, she doesn't just say her name, she can spell AND read
it! She's got curly locks that brush her shoulders and opinions about how said locks
should be managed. She tells me things about her classmates staying home sick, throwing
up at school and misbehaving. I'll talk to her about the gossip issue later; for
now I'm just happy to hear her speaking. She relies more and more on her voice and
works hard to learn to say things correctly in English. We still love to sign, but
it's wonderful to see her communicate easily with non-signers.
Paula has grown into
a bona-fide girly girl, too. If it's skirts, dresses, fancy shoes, nail polish,
pink, purple, red or otherwise frilly, she loves it. I'm discovering a whole feminine
side of myself that I never knew, and my daughter is leading the way.
But underneath that
pink and frilly exterior is the same determined child she's always been. She conquered
her fear of going to the doctor by practicing "being brave" in mock medical
visits at home with us. (Since getting weighed is part of doctor's visits, she recently
commented as I stepped onto our bathroom scale, "Mommy's brave!" More
than she knows!)
Whenever Paula has
the chance, either at a McD's play area or at the park near my parents' place outside
Atlanta, she climbs up high to tackle the big slide. Climbing
and sliding are her two favorite ways to play. She doesn't like to wear her coat
and insists on carrying it about 60 percent of the time when we go out into the
chilly Chicago air. The other 40 percent are times we have asserted that she "gets
to choose about what to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what toothbrush to use,
what toothpaste to use, what books to read, and so on; and now it's Mommy and Daddy's
turn to choose." Amazingly, this generally works and she peacefully submits
to being bundled.
This is how I see
that the difficult, unpredictable child who used to be so intolerant of change is
gone. In her place is someone I can talk with, someone who laughs at simple jokes,
who loves babies and tries to make me abduct them from restaurants and doctor's
offices. She's unclear on the concept that we can't just keep them. That will come,
I'm sure. But the child I have now is so different from the baby whose crying I
used to fear. It's wonderful. In fact, I might even decide to do that baby thing
again this year. We'll see.
Posted at:Wed, Feb 07 2007 12:54:33 PM
Comments
