Baby Love

The Boss has taken to belting out "baby" at intervals for which I cannot seem to determine the motivation. She learned the word just last week when her grandparents brought her first baby doll. She held it; she kissed it; she fed it a bottle. She called it "baby."

Since then, the word has taken on a heightened significance. She looks at pictures of herself as a newborn and says "baby." She wakes from nap screeching "baby" as a way to get my attention. She looks in the mirror and sees a baby. When her father puts her in her crib at night, it's to a chorus of "baby, baby, baby."

We first thought she was asking for her doll each time she'd say it. That quickly proved not to be the case. Then I started thinking she was simply babbling to hear herself speak (which, by the way, would be yet another indication that she is almost entirely her father's daughter). But with each passing "baby," the truth became clearer and clearer to me. The Boss is starting to figure herself out.

When she wakes from naps, she's telling me she's ready to be picked up. "This baby is done sleeping" would be the rough translation, I think. It's a basic tactic, but even before I figured out the meaning, it worked.

That baby in the mirror is her. "Guk! Baby!" becomes "Look! It's me! I'm a baby!" to the enlightened mama.

And at bedtime, it's again the girl that hates her crib. "I'm not tired. Why don't you get it? Babies don't like to sleep!"

Watching her slow ride into the realms of thinking, feeling and articulating makes me feel like the only mother in the world--past, present and future. I've heard about the joys of watching children grow, but other people's recollections never meant anything to me. They still mean nothing. The only thing that reverberates against the closed doors of perception is the strange, personal newness of growing my own human being. Her life is something I need to experience for myself to truly understand.

I will learn slowly and, more often than not, the hard way; but even if she's more her father's daughter than she is mine, so will she.