Journal Excerpt

One really great thing about E is that she’s always in a great mood when she wakes up. She likes to sit in her crib and talk or sing to herself, for an indefinite period of time. We stopped using a baby monitor a long time ago, mostly because I’d rather live in ignorance and assume she’s asleep unless I hear anything obvious, but occasionally I’ll sneak up to her room and sit outside her door in the mornings or after her nap. She’ll be talking to the animals in her crib, or her blanket. The other day I heard her counting, “One! two! Three! Four! Nine! Ten!” She’ll recount phrases of the stories she likes to hear, or sing songs really loud and off-tune. Once I heard her say, “mommy loves me.”

I have to admit I freely abuse her good humor in the mornings and take my time going to get her. It’s not unusual for me to hear her wake up at 6:30 A.M. and not go pick her up until 8:00. I think D is slightly horrified by this, but she’s always cheerful enough when I finally make it in her room. Her first words to me will be something completely random, as if we were in the middle of a conversation, like “bunny has eyes” or “mommy’s hair is wet.”

She’s also adopted a charming bedtime routine. Right around 8:30 P.M. I’ll tell her to lie on me a little, and pick her up and she’ll turn very still and lay her head on my shoulder. She asks for a goodnight kiss from daddy and whomever else is in the house, then still with her head on my shoulder we head to her room. I give her the security blanket and pacifier, turn on her sleep music, turn off the lights, and hold her and sing. Lately it’s been “baby mine” from Dumbo, or “I Am” by Jill Phillips, or “You’ll Be In My Heart” from Tarzan. These are my favorite moments, because it’s dark, it’s just me and her, I can feel her head in the crook of my neck and her fingers holding on to me or rubbing my shirt, and I can be still with her. Then I pray, and as soon as I say “amen” she lifts up her head, I lay her down in her crib on her back, pull up her blanket, stroke her hair a few times, and leave the room.

She lies very still and looks at me as I shut the door. Though I peaked back once and verified the fact that as soon as she thinks I’m gone, she scrambles up from the carefully-arranged blanket and lies down on top of it with her head towards the foot of the crib and her butt sticking up in the air.

She turned two this week. It hasn’t been so terrible.