Parental Love

I fell in love with my daughter this afternoon. Since she's two years old, maybe this is a little late, but better late than never, right? The moment was sweet and striking. This post was half written in my head before I remembered that tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

Of course I loved her before now. But I'm not mushy. I was not one of those moms who talks about feeling in love the moment I laid eyes on my newborn baby. Fortunately, I had heard that not all moms feel that way, and it's okay to feel however you feel, so I wasn't very worried about that. I just let new motherhood do its thing while I tried to keep up.

Once, talking to another mom friend of mine, I described my love for Ladybug like the air I breathe, or like water to a fish. I would be lost without her, but the love is so immediate that I couldn't observe it. Or possibly fully appreciate it.

My love tends to be fierce, not sentimental. I do observe how quickly kids grow, but I don't feel wistful because my baby just turned two, for example. I know other women do feel this way, and if I ever forgot, I would just have to check Facebook to see the reminders. When I think of my daughter's birthday, I'm more likely to feel something like: "Darn straight she's two! We've earned that year! Can I take a nap now?"

My parental love is also overly intellectualized. I'm just constantly analyzing myself, and no, I don't think that's a always good thing! In my analysis of parenthood, I have always focused on what I will provide my daughter, without much reference to what I feel or want. I believe, firmly, that she deserves to be nurtured regardless of how she feels about me, or what I'm getting out of the situation. When I have thought about what I get out of being a mother, it has been in terms of personal growth and lessons learned.

Then, this afternoon I went to get Bug after her nap. She woke up slowly, looking up at me occasionally, stretching into odd contortions, and eventually slithering off her bed head first. Now, she has been playing a game of walking with her eyes closed, and sometimes it turns into a sort of Marco Polo thing. So when her feet hit the ground, she closed her eyes and felt her way along the bed toward me. I knelt down so my face would be even with hers when her eyes opened. Then she reached me, opened her eyes and smiled.

And for some reason that was when it struck me: she loves me too. Realizing this opened me up to a whole wave of emotions. The sense of being in a relationship with someone, and of her vulnerability. I have always felt, and accepted, that I am open to her judgment and rejection. I'm just her mother, after all. She has to reject me, and turn me into her backstory. Of course I hope we can have a good relationship when she is an adult, but that comes second to her healthy individuality. But she loves me too, with all the vulnerabilities that go along with loving another human being. Unlike her mother, she loves without intellectualizing it. Her love is unadulterated. How unspeakably precious a state.

Finally, I felt mushy. Tender. About to help her down the stairs, I asked whether she wanted to be carried, and she preferred to walk. And I felt that I would rather carry her, cuddling her close. I kept that feeling to myself while she walked. I can imagine how some people experience parenthood as a series of losses as the child grows.

It feels nice to be loved. Very nice. It's still not the reason for all I do for her. It's still all about her, and her needs come first. Eventually, she will reject me (I hope temporarily), and I will still love her and give to her and do for her. But it feels very nice to be loved.

Winter Treats

Yesterday was fun. It was full of activity. In the morning we made pine cone bird feeders. I guess bird seed isn't poisonous, because Ladybug ate it by the fistful, with a side of peanut butter.

It had snowed in the night, but by 11:00 am the sun was strong and it was warm enough to have some fun outside. I hung up the pine cone feeders, which very quickly became squirrel food. The cones disappeared within hours! I guess there are some well-stocked nearby squirrel nests now. I'm considering looking into a permanent feeder. Ladybug knows a few birds: bluejay, cardinal, robin. It would be fun to watch more from the back window. 

Even though it would all melt soon anyway, we had fun shoveling snow together. Bug insisted on helping out.

Then in the afternoon we made chocolate cookies, heart-shaped in honor of Valentine's Day. I just got a rolling pin with special disks on the side to control the thickness of the dough. Between that and parchment paper (no more flouring countertops!) cookies are almost too easy to make now. Ladybug had a lot of trouble waiting until after they were baked to eat them!

Monday Farm School - Sheep

We had a great day on Monday. Last week, Ladybug was not feeling ready to attend her farm class. This week we arrived super early so she had plenty of time to warm up, literally and figuratively. We sat in a side room off the main classroom for about half an hour, reading books and playing with a few rocks and bits of fur in cups (the kind of touch and feel nature stuff you would find at an exhibit for kids). Although she remained fussy-sensitive for most of the class, she was able to experience it. We got to play with fleece and card the wool. Then we strung cereal on necklaces, which Bug was more skilled at than I expected. She made me laugh when I noticed she was stringing cereal and just as quickly eating it off the other end of the yarn. I do think I will look into lacing beads!

The main event was getting to feed and pet sheep. I wish I had a picture of Bug, and all the preschoolers, holding armfuls of hay as big as their little bodies, waddling in snowsuits to drop the hay in the trough. Then, because the children had helped out on the farm, they were allowed inside the pen with the sheep. Sheep really are docile, which is a good thing since we were letting at least ten 2-4 year olds run wild in their home. Ladybug was excited about the sheep, and cried when one walked away from her. We followed the whole herd outside and up a hill with a lovely view of bare winter trees against bright blue sky.

2 Year Check In, Looking Forward

I have (in books and online) tons of lists of milestones that my toddler probably-might-should meet by her second birthday. Or some of them are considered ones she'll meet during this, her third year. I'm really reluctant to get too caught up in them, but they are good to review now and then. So here goes.

Here's a list of life skills from the blog Busy Kids = Happy Mom. The first item, "undress self," makes me laugh right out loud. Ladybug is so good at undressing herself that for a while we found her naked after every naptime. But do we let her use this skill practically? So I just suggested to my husband that during the bedtime routine, Ladybug should be encouraged to take of her own outfit before diaper change and PJs. Moving toward independence once skill at a time. Cool!

The rest of the items on that list are similar. Things she can do that we would like to start encouraging as part of the routines. We're doing well with teeth brushing. A lot of the cleaning up items would be nice to do more regularly, especially clearing her space at the table. I hadn't thought of that! She does play independently for a good long stretch during afternoon quiet time. She doesn't comb her own hair, but I'm going out on a limb and assuming this list wasn't made with mixed girls' tight curls in mind.

Slow and Steady: Get Me Ready has lists for each year entitled "Measurable Parameters to Profile Child Development." According to the book, your child needs to attain 16 out of 20 parameters to consider development satisfactory. Okay. Let's look at 2 to 3 years:

To keep it brief, let me just say checkity check check. Jumping, climbing, running. Crayon scribbles, stringing words together, listening to stories, imitation, understanding of simple concepts, quiet play. The only things she isn't really doing are skills I would expect a little later into her third year. These are: knowing her full name, knowing her sex, and knowing her age. I bet she understands her gender, but she hasn't started talking about it. Although the other day she pointed at my husband and me, dubbing us first "the dad and the mom," and then "the brother and the sister." I think that is gender identification. She didn't make it personal to herself though.

The other day I had the markers out and Bug made a game out of matching the caps to the right marker. She was pretty insistent on doing this, so I watched her carefully. With no input from me, she was able to match them all up, correcting her own mismatches once or twice. I enjoyed this and decided to mention it in my "assessment" post, because it seems like exactly the kind of exercise that I could have nervously administered as a test. Instead it happened naturally in the course of play, which is the way most of these mini-milestones took place.