It’s been an eventful month around here. First , we’ve taken the next big step into the bourgeoisie life and hired…gasp…a nanny. I’m now working about six hours per day, which is perfect for now. I’ve been grateful to have so much time with Mojo Jojo (except maybe during those first couple of months, when gratitude was not the prevailing emotion), but it’s time for me to get back to my other life. We were generally happy with Top Dollar Day Care, but we wanted more individual attention for Miss B, and the cost of sending two kids to Top Dollar was almost the same as the cost of having someone come to us. We spent a lot of time working from home for the first week she was here, which enabled us to train her and watch her closely, and so far she hasn’t turned all Rebecca De Mornay on me.
Perhaps dissatisfied with our collection of children’s music (KT Tunstall doesn’t cut it?), the nanny made a mixed CD of kiddie tunes that were sure to please (having worked in a daycare center, she knows much more about these things than I do). And please they did. In fact, Miss B is so happy with this CD that the entire dynamic of our family has changed. Whenever we’re in the living room she signs “music” and goes over to the stereo. She presses various buttons on the CD player until it starts. While her music is playing, she’ll sometimes do these new little dance moves. (Even if the nanny doesn’t work out, I’ll be forever grateful that she taught Miss B the chicken dance.) And as important as I think music is for a good life, and as much as I appreciate that B loves music so much, this music is driving me batty. After three or four repetitions of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” or “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”, I’m usually ready for something either a little edgier or a little more silent. But can I really deny my Bean her music? What kind of mom does that? Last night we were trying to catch the News Hour and B kept trying to start her CD. I found myself telling her, “No, no more music. It’s time to watch TV.” Mother of the year.
In addition to taking over our living room and planting daily earworms, I’m convinced that the nanny’s CD has corrupted B’s taste. B used to be charmed by my singing. My singing would always get rapt attention and a standing ovation. But my thin little unaccompanied voice is no match for the rocking excitement on this CD. I seem to have lost a great deal of entertainment value. This does not really bother me. In fact, I think we’ve reached an important milestone. Part of growing up is falling in love with music that your parents don’t appreciate. Like when I was 12 and became obsessed with “Heat of the Moment” by Asia, and even though I tried to explain that Asia was not just a group but a SUPERGROUP, and that they had the coolest sea creature on the album cover, my parents just didn’t get it. Nobody ever understood me, ever.
Also in the music vein, I’ve been sitting B in front of the piano a lot lately. She loves it. She bangs, of course, but I’m impressed that she really seems to be listening to what she’s doing. She’ll vary the pitch by reaching as far to the left and then as far to the right as she can. She’ll play very softly and then will break out with some loud banging (Smells like Bean Spirit). She rarely imitates me with speech sounds, but when I play the piano, she’ll often then try to reach for the same keys I just played, as if to copy. Okay, so maybe I still hold a little entertainment value. I hope she will learn to play for real someday.
We’ve had some language progress in the past month. While she’s been able to point to her eyes, ears, mouth, etc. for a while, indicating her receptive language skills, she recently started saying “eye.” Unfortunately, she often says it when pointing to her ear, but it’s still talking so I can’t complain. She now says “bye bye” too. Actually, this is part of a shtick in which she picks up her purse and keys, goes to the front door, waves, says “bye bye,” and then signs “car.” I guess she sees a lot of that. As I said, mother of the year.
And then there is the walking. She still crawls to get around a lot, but she’s starting to walk more and more. The other day she made it out of one room and well into another, taking 28 little steps in a row before flopping down. I like to count them. For some reason it seems to be easier for her if she is carrying her purse and keys in her hands. We have waited so very long for this.
We’ve been doing a lot of artsy craftsy things lately. On our OT’s advice, we broke B’s crayons in half to encourage her to hold them in her fingers rather than in a fist and we’ve also been trying to get her to use the crayons more purposefully. For the first few months that we were playing with crayons she would either bang them on the paper, leaving little pock marks that she didn’t even seem to notice, or she would drag them across the paper in whatever motion was most natural to her little arm. She didn’t seem to get that there was a connection between how she moved her body and the result that appeared on the paper. (Aside: One of the things I’m starting to really enjoy about parenting is how it makes me appreciate seemingly automatic, uninteresting things. Via the technology of crayons, a fleeting action becomes fixed in a two-dimensional representation that can be hung with pride on the refrigerator. It’s a recording of sorts.) Now she’s starting to get it. We work on moving the crayon up and down and around in circles and she’s starting to copy these strokes. Yesterday she drew her very first circle. Actually, it’s an ellipse, but it was the very first time she tried to draw a circle. I hadn’t realized how meaningful this milestone would be for me – my baby is going to write.
