Long Day

Every so often E goes through a change in which it feels like I’m losing someone I knew and trying to get to know a whole different person. It hasn’t been exactly an overnight thing, but it’s the first time in a while I’ve been alone with her for days at a time, with D out of town and the holidays over. The last time I felt like this was when she stopped being a newborn and started moving around.

I feel mostly exhausted, and a little sad. I was watching videos of her around nine months, and I miss that smaller, shorter-haired thing that crawled aimlessly around. No drama, no tantrums. Now she has both an extremely apparent will, and the inability to fully express it. She has the desire to be independent and have control, but the inability to always do it, either because she physically can’t or I tell her she can’t. Sometimes all that just gets to her and she needs to let it out by rolling around on the ground in frustration.

At least that’s what helps me make sense of it. What it feels like is a bunch of contradictory signals and unpredictable behavior. When she sees me in the morning, she’ll get upset when I want to pick her up, then upset if I leave. She wants to do everything by herself but gets upset if I move farther than five inches from her side. She throws a tantrum every time I try to change her diaper or put her to bed. When I’m holding her, she’ll writhe to get down but as soon as I do cry to get back up. Put that on repeat the whole day, and it becomes draining: just to understand what she wants, what she’s thinking and feeling, and to try to emotionally and physically buffer all of it.

Somewhere through that I’m also trying to think about what’s best for her, to sort out what lines to set and battles to fight. Sometimes I think I’m just so relieved to finally understand what she wants, or so eager to have some quiet, that I just give in.

But there are things I enjoy too. I like how she still wants to be held, how she tugs on my pants when I’m washing the dishes. How she says “ma-ma,” and says it only for me. I like her spontaneous hugs and how she becomes beside herself with excitement when she sees me coming or when I chase her around. I like those moments when I’m totally taken away by how much she understands or some new word or sign.

I like how she copies things I don’t even think she notices—like touching the Purell bottle and then pretending to wash her hands, or blowing on a piece of previously-hot food because she saw me do it before handing it to her. I like how she reads books out loud to herself, VERY LOUDLY, making random sounds while turning the pages in random order. I like how she’s very conscientious about putting everything back where it was, even when I don’t ask her to. I like how she likes holding one of my hands while walking around. I like how she can understand very complicated commands, like “let’s go put the apples back in the kitchen and then go upstairs and then get naked for the bath.”

I suppose one day I’ll miss these things too. Maybe not the tantrums. But those other things.

Journal Excerpt

This is how a typical conversation goes:

[E screaming and whining at dinner]
“E, mommy can’t tell what you want. What do you want?”
[E becomes very serious and quiet]
“Dah.”
“What? What’s ‘dah’?”
“Dah.” [points vaguely] “Dah.”
“E, mommy doesn’t know; what’s ‘dah’?”
I start pointing to everything I can see.
“Is it this?” [shakes her head] “This?” [shakes her head] “This?” [shakes her head]
[whining resumes]
D: “Oh, she wants the tomatoes.”
“What? What tomatoes?”
“The ones sitting behind the tissue and the pot of soup and the napkins on the other side of the table where you can’t see.”
“Oh. Obviously.”
I give them to her. She starts getting all happy.
“DAH!”

At The Piano

This photo is purposely blurry so you can't tell: is this me, in the 1980s, or E, child prodigy at fifteen months?