Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

So I'm running around with this fairly miserable toddler at the grocery store today, and I think, "Wouldn't this be so much easier if she weren't here?" We have had a rough couple of days.

The real highlight of the weekend was her foul mood at Ben and Mary Ellen's. She threw a series of fitlets, and shaking her head "no" a lot — an emerging trend I expect to enjoy. Not. Ben and Mary Ellen were their usual good sports, demurring as Lucy pawed every pristine surface in their house. They laughed, but they will be finding chocolate cupcake smeared in unexpected places for a long time. Kristen and Steve, with a four-month-old Clay who cooed and smiled quietly the entire time, seemed amused and, ahem, interested in preparing for the future. Marc and Lauren, who have been around their fair share of toddlers, were entertained. But I am pretty sure I overheard Lauren refilling her birth control prescription on the phone in the guest bedroom.

I'm kidding about most of that. Lu really is not that bad. Yes, I admit, it was almost entirely our fault, because she'd been denied a full morning nap due to brunch plans and had no afternoon nap because of the barbecue. But we're trying to live. To be social animals, out in the world. With our grouchy, messy baby. Ready to invite us over? Mind if we put a really crappy diaper in your trash can and leave tiny, oily paw prints on your windows? We'll be right there.

So yeah, life would be easier if she weren't here. And life would be...less. Despite that fact that she is a tremendous inconvenience for someone who still doesn't weigh 22 pounds, she's pretty much worth it. She sleeps as I write this, so I like her more (see "Night Night," two entries ago). She is funny. She likes to dance. She gives hugs. She'll even kiss you if she's in the mood.

Tomorrow at work, one of my co-workers is bringing a baby goat to work (long story). I have always loved baby goats — maybe more than baby humans. A herd of baby goats followed me down the street once. I felt like Snow White. For Lu's sake, I really hope tomorrow's baby goat is not that great. The bad news for me is that no one raises toddlers for 4H.

Live on Stage...

It's worse than teaching your dog to fetch or play basketball. Lucy knows tricks. We pass them off as signs of intelligence. But really, they are just her parents' tricks and Lucy is our happy little seal.

Daddy: "Lucy, what noise does a dog make?"
Lucy: "whooo hooo hooo hooo hoooo!"

Daddy: "Lucy, blow a kiss!"
Lucy: "mmmmmwahhhh." Then she blows a kiss.

And the hit parade goes on. Granted, we are just underscoring behavior she picks up from us every day (that's a scary topic for later - here's hoping she doesn't fart and point at the TV like her dad). But, she seems more and more like a person every day — even if she is just playing to our cues.

For the first time, I'm starting to feel the emotional responsibility of being a parent. She's going to watch us to see how to act. Helpful for getting her to root for the right sports franchises, but scary for getting her to interact with other people.

For now, I'm happy with the Arsenio Hall tribute everytime we ask Lucy about the dogs. With a little luck and the right mixture of TV shows, she'll be a nice person.

Night Night

I go into Lucy's room every night before I go to bed. I turn on the hallway light, open her door and creep in. She is almost always asleep on her stomach, blanket and Duck wadded beneath her. When I try to straighten them, she snorts and smacks and draws her knees under her. Or sometimes she flops onto her back, irritated and frowning in her sleep. It's impossible to love her one bit more in these moments. I want to wake her up and eat her.

I don't wake her up, because even now, her sleep seems precious, though consistent. She goes to sleep at 7:30 every night, sleeps until 7 or so, and has done this regularly since she was about 5 months old. I am told to be thankful, that lots of babies don't start sleeping through the night until, well, they are not babies. I credit Jason with Lucy's sleeping (both through the night and not in our bed). His mantra: "You just have to have confidence in her. She can do it." And she did.

But until she did, I was a wreck. I read so much on the topic, I became convinced that sleep was the central issue in her (our?) well-being. She would be maladjusted, low-performing, angry if she didn't get enough rest. Not unlike her mother. Back in those early, weary days, her sleep was as fragile as a spiderweb. Naps could fall apart with the breeze. Jason says that when the baby monitor crackled to life, I would look at it in horror, like Satan herself was stirring. I would have done — and did — anything to get Lucy to sleep, and happily murdered anyone who awoke her. I once stood in the yard and shook my fist at a teenager riding his unmufflered motorcycle through the neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon. I considered calling the police. PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP AROUND HERE.

I am grateful that period was relatively brief, and that she has learned to sleep like a champ. Sometimes she dives into her crib before Jason can finish one verse of "American Pie." Other times, she talks and sings to Duck for awhile. But there is no crying, and sleep always comes. At least, for Lucy. Just like I am told to be thankful she sleeps, I am told I won't sleep the same ever again — me who snored my way through Central America by bus. But so far, what markedly less sleep I get is a little sweeter with one last peek at her.

The Interpreter

I like to brag a lot about all the words Lucy can say, but I realize that most of them are intelligible only to me and Jason. For those of you who care, here is a brief translation of the Lucy lexicon.

Words she says:
• Dadada = Jason, Father, the black hair sticking up from beneath the covers
• Mamama = Kate, Mother, the most important person in the world
• Dah = dog
• Duh = Duck
• Buh = book
• Wa-wa (plus a hand motion that looks like a stereotypical Native American war cry) = water
• Ooh-ooh-ooh = the sound a dog makes
• Mlah-mlah = the sound a kittycat makes (say "kittycat," not "cat" which sounds like "cow" the sound below)
• Moo (quietly) = the sound a cow makes
• Uh = up
• Uh oh = uh oh or I just fed something to the dogs
• Gogogo = Go? (from a TMBG song. We're not sure she knows it's a word, but she says it a lot.)
• Dye-dye = bye-bye

Words she signs:
Cheese or anything that rhymes with cheese
Eat
All done/all gone
Water (see hand motion above)
Good
Hook 'em Horns (this is enthusiastic pointing with some help from Dadada)

Her report card from school keeps saying she's talkative: "Lucy talked all afternoon, then she talked herself to sleep, then we knew she was awake because she was talking again." Enamored of the sound of her own voice at 13 months, 17 days. Nothing like her quiet parents.

Taming the Beast

We seem to have reached an exciting and stormy new phase in Lucy's development, about 11 months early by my count: tantrums. Wednesday morning, she repeatedly pointed to something high on a shelf, her lips pursed and blowing. Hark! She wanted the container of bubbles up there. Genius baby, I thought. So I took her outside on the front lawn to blow the bubbles. But the special container designed to keep her from spilling the bubbles also prevented her from being able to get the wand in and out of the container, which she wanted to do HERSELF. Unsuccessful, and uninterested in my help, she threw herself onto the grass in a screaming, snotty rage. The hysterics grew and she could only be calmed after several minutes of Baby Einstein.

On Saturday, she spied another container of bubbles, which Jason handed to her. On finding it empty, the beast emerged again — she dramatically collapsed on the kitchen floor in a full-on, wall-eyed fit. This was an illustrative moment about our different parenting styles: I was practically in tears myself, saying "What do we do? Look at her, she's acting like an asshole." Jason just stood there and laughed his ass off.

The thing is, we're both right. On the one hand, it's just plain hysterical — both the idea that anything in this loved, well-fed child's life merits such melodrama and that she's capable of expressing it. On the other hand, at some point we have to figure out what to do. We were out a few times this weekend, and I could see a little storm stirring in Lu's head. I wished I had some kind of plan, some technique besides "give the beast whatever it wants, anything to stop the screaming." That feeble technique won't work because these fits seem to be borne of frustration about something she can't say or do herself, not something she wants that I could give her. And if I could always give it to her, wouldn't that turn her into an asshole?

The answer to these questions, or at least some varied, published opinions, are in the parenting section of the bookstore, which I haven't visited since the simpler times when sleeping and eating were our main concerns. I hadn't expected to be back there until she was closer to the terrible twos. Maybe the early appearance of tantrums is just further evidence of her accelerated development, the bratty little genius.