Growing a Grrrrrrrrrl

Before Sophia was born, I tried to conjure images of what it would be like to have a baby. The best I could do was a brief fantasy of taking a pre-school aged boy to the Museum of Natural Sciences. I imagined showing him the dinosaur bones and then having lunch, just the two of us, in the café. I couldn’t see his face, just his legs gleefully swinging back and forth, not touching the ground.

Just in case you missed it, here are the key points in the previous paragraph:

• Preschooler, not baby (not our topic for today)
• Boy, not girl

I feared having a girl. Partly because I had bought into cultural stereotypes (girls are whiny and moody) and partly because I blame some of the misery of my childhood on girlhood (the snarkiness, the underground competition, the rapidly shifting allegiances). Then, of course, there are Bratz dolls, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, cutting, thongs, roofies, HPV, Cosmo Girl ....you get the picture.

The fact of the matter is, I think of myself as a pretty male-identified female. I don’t like to be touched when I’m upset. I can build a kick-ass fort. I enjoy hunting for earthworms and have no qualms about picking them up with my bare hands. Dolls, on the other hand, have always spooked me. And I never did get the hang of applying makeup. Which is why I knew, in my heart of hearts, that my he would be a she.

Of course, there was the possibility that like me, she would move more fluidly between established gender roles. And so, I’ve done what I can to foster it. Before she inherited a Little Tykes Country Kitchen from my friend Pam’s boys, she had a trash-picked Tool Bench. I avoid buying pink clothes. I’ve banished the word “princess” from my vocabulary.

But given a mountain of stuffed animals, Sophia selected a plush doll for her transitional object, who she named “baby” and carries everywhere. And recently, when I furnished her with an old purse of mine, filled with the accoutrements of womanhood (wallet, sunglasses, chapstick) she slung it over her arm, gave me a backwards glance and said, bye bye, as if now she was armed with all she needed to move forward in the world.

I really am sick of nature vs. nurture arguments. Certainly, our behavior results from a synthesis of the two. But as Sophie’s childhood looms before me, I wonder, how much influence can I exact? How do I do it without having her run screaming from me in the opposite direction, towards Spike, the pierced and tattooed, verbally abusive spermdonor of her learning-disabled crack baby?

Okay, maybe that is extreme. But, you get the picture.

I want so badly to do it right. Balance the love and boundaries. Hold her tight and let her go. And it means fighting impulses and influences and Sophie herself at times. And I’m always questioning whether I have the wherewithal to do it.

The Case Against...

Is it possible to overthink the question, “Should I have another child?”

I mean, making a person is a huge responsibility. It’s a gift. It’s a blessing.

It’s irreversible.

And it’s not just about me. It’s about Kevin, Sophia, and this other human being who I don’t want to find staring into a mirror when he’s fifteen saying, “I wish I never was born.”

Here are my fears:

Sophia is healthy, sweet-tempered, somnolent, engaging, book-obsessed, wide-eyed, attention-mongering child. In other words, she is the trickster-baby. The perfect first child who cons parents into having another. I’ve watched what happens: Lulled into a sense of safety, parents bear a second and are horrified to learn that the combination of their genes can also result in a sleepless, colicky, inconsolable human being who only eats chicken nuggets.

Having another child is fucking with fate. It’s getting greedy. It’s pushing the bounds of what I’m allowed to have in this lifetime. It’s asking for more when I already have everything I’ve ever wanted.

I could never give a second child the quality of attention that I’ve given Sophia: the hours I’ve spent talking, singing, and reading to her, the close scrutiny of every day of her development, the readiness with which I abandoned all other things to tend to her needs. Isn’t it always the first child whose every move is captured on film, every word recorded, every gift treasured? The second is a blurry image, an uncertain history.

I could never love another child as I do Sophia. A second child would always feel like second best. I would be forced to pretend to love this second child as much as I love my first, my attempts at equity painfully transparent, psychologically noxious.

Having a second child would create a rupture in my relationship with Sophia that can never be repaired. She will always resent her sibling, always harbor anger towards me, and always long for a time when she, and she alone, was mine.

I’m trying to maintain a fragile balance of work, couple-hood, self, and motherhood, which, on any given day appears tipped towards one of these poles, to the distress of another. One more would throw my life into chaos, forcing me to constantly decide, “Who am I going to disappoint today?”

I’ve asked parents of two to give me a reason why I should do it. They all told me they loved the second just as much as the first. No one admitted to regretting the decision. Many shared touching moments when one child empathically embraced the other.

But they’ve all said it is exponentially harder than having just one.

The Case For...

Kevin, my nephew (not to be confused with Kevin, my husband), and Jennifer, my sister, came to visit us for a nice long weekend. Seeing Jennifer again—and watching Sophia, shrieking with delight, scamper up the stairs after her cousin--has tipped me in the direction of maybe, possibly having another child.

Sure, she used to sneak into my room and rifle through my things (once eating all of the Hershey’s Kisses off of a felt wall hanging I had purchased for her as a Hanukkah gift—ahhhhh, the satisfaction in watching her open that ravaged piece of felt with empty foil wrappers attached to it.) Yes, she used to grab the remote, lean back on the bed and kick me in the stomach so I couldn’t get near it (or her, for that matter). Of course she pestered me, asking the same questions over and over again, “Can I have a turn?” “How does this look?” “Will you play with me now?” Isn’t that what little sisters do?

But there were good times too—putting cold wash cloths on each others’ red tushies after dad spanked us for getting red paint on the rug, holding hands as we made our way down the staircase towards our goyisha four-foot fake fir on Christmas morning, pretending that we lived in rooms 4444 and 4443 of a grand hotel (NOT in a house with our parents), calling each other by our made-up pet names “Joanurn and Junurn” and chatting away in a mysterious language we invented as we went along.

My sister: the thorn in my side, encroacher on my only childhood, thief of parental attention, insanely cute, golden, curly-haired, wide eyed, skinny screaming child who can make me laugh until my stomach hurts, who IS my memory and the witness to my childhood, who loves me for no reason other than I am her older sister.

She left this morning, and the house feels so empty without her.

And then there is Kevin—halfway between a little boy and a teenager, still unabashedly affectionate, his mouth constantly moving, his brain constantly whirring. Kevin, who still calls my sister “momma,” who would eat the contents of my sugar bowl if he thought the deed would go unpunished, who stood in the family bathroom of the Franklin Institute and said incredulously, “25 cents for a napkin? What a rip off! I could get one for free!” Kevin who spontaneously tells me he loves me when he feels it, who patiently reads to Sophia with a fluency unmatched by most adults, and who wanted to know if there were any secret passageways in my house.

I hadn’t really thought anyone was missing from the table, until I had more at the table and, suddenly, they were gone.

Gotta Get Down

Among Sophia’s first words are: mama, dada (in that order), maw (as in “give me more”), bo (as in “read to me”), gain (as in “read it again”), moon (as in “Goodnight Moon”), mi (as in “yes, milk sounds like a fine idea”) and DOWWWNNNN (as in, “I want to go downstairs; I want to get down from my highchair; I want to get down from my car seat; I want to get down on the floor; etc.”)

This list deviates somewhat from that of the “Top 10 First Words” put out by the MacArthur Foundation. In the spirit of New Years, lets's count them down:

10. Dog (no dogs in my house)
9. YumYum (no sugar allowed…at least not for babies)
8. Bottle (nix on the bottle too)
7. Grr (bears fear me—and how does this count as a first word? When was the last time you heard grr come up in a conversation?)
6. Uhoh (granted, this is part of her repertoire—totally my fault; I love it when babies say it)
5. Hi (yes, but only when prompted)
4. Bye (if you put your coat on, or if she’s listening to “Birdie Bye Bye" on her fridge radio)
3. BaaBaa (along with, a cow says “moo,” a sheep says “baa,” three singing pigs say “lalala.”)
2. Mama (number one)
1. Dada (number two)

So if first words are all about relevancy, not frequency (which research says they are), then Kevin and I aren’t simply asking Sophie if she wants “to get down” over and over again (if anything, we’re avoiding the word at all costs)—emblematic of her personality, Sophie simply wants to get down. She’s a girl with places to go…few of which are places I want her to be.

Does this irk me?

Not in the least. From the moment she could roll over, like a teen with her first set of wheels, she was off. Whether she’s got a destination or she’s just cruising because she can, Sophia is on the move. And really, who am I to stop her?

Spitting Image

I was talking to my mother on the phone. Next to me, Sophie took a deep breath and let out an extended sigh, “Ahhhhhhhhh.”

“That baby is always sighing,” I told my mom, “she’s got ennui.”

“What?” My mother always says “what” before actually processing what someone says.

“She’s bored with life.”

“She’s immitating YOU. You just sighed. YOU sigh a lot.”

And sure enough, when I started to pay attention, I realized the sigh started with me.

From sighs, we moved onto sneezes. And coughs. And burps. And any other sound that happened to come out of me.

“It’s time for you to stop swearing,” Kevin suggested.

“I'm working on it. I say ‘f-ing’ now, and m-f-er.”

Kevin just looked at me.

“Okay, okay, I’ll try.” I made a raspberry at Sophie. And she spit back at me.

With great power, comes great responsibility.

Blowout

Sophia and I are driving over the Ben Franklin Bridge, back from Narberth where we picked up my ailing laptop, rocking out to a Southern rendition of “On Top of Spaghetti.”
The sun is beating down on the car, and Sophie is joyfully dissembling her carseat. She’s pulled the sun shade down in front of her so I can no longer see her face in my jerry-rigged system of mirrors.

“Pee-eew. Do you smell that, Sophie,” I ask, rhetorically. “Mustardy. Kind of like your baby-poo….” I glance up at the mirror. With horror, my eye lingers over the image that bounces back at me.

One foot, covered in greenish yellow poop is suspended in midair. I am reminded of the first image I saw of her during her high-level ultrasound. One perfect formed tibia, tarsels, and metatarsels, glowing white. I swooned at that foot. And now, I am swooning again—but for completely different reasons.

I am at a choice point. I can either get really really stressed about this, or I can save it up as an anecdote I’ll write about later in my blog.

I go with the latter.

One thought keeps haunting me. If that’s what her foot looks like, what about the rest of her? But I will have to wait until I get home to find this out.

We arrive, 15 minutes later. I stop the car and pause, steeling myself. Step out of the air conditioning into the thick heat of the day. Open the back door. She turns to me, her face already breaking into a smile. Her legs kicking with glee. Shit smeared across her forehead.

It was everywhere. Covering her hands. Down her legs. Staining her outfit. Ground into every crevice of the car seat. I could only hope that she hadn’t sucked her thumb in the last fifteen minutes. Striving to maintain my good humor, I carried her and the carseat into the house.

It’s difficult to know where to start with a poop-covered baby. I weighed my options. The thought of sticking her in the sink grossed me out, after all, that’s where I rinse our fruits and vegetables. I’d have to do a surface clean and then stick her in her tub. I’m embarrassed to say how many wipes I used. In fact, I won’t.

But, eventually Sophia was smelling fresh, the carseat was spotless, and I had washed my hands enough times (out out damned spot) to finally feel like I wasn’t going to play a critical role in a local e. choli outbreak.

Like all things, the incident quickly transformed from reality to memory.

What is this crap, and where's my milk?

We’ve started Sophia on solids. I’m not sure if it was my mother, threatening to feed her lemon Italian ices as her first food or my own guilt that surged every time she reached for what I was eating. And I eat a lot. Thus, I was feeling guilty, a lot. Mom was over, watching Sophie while I worked. C’mon, she said. Just a little banana? She already had it half-way peeled and was dancing around, banana in hand. I have to admit, this was hard to resist.

Okay, I said. Let me text Kevin. Make sure its okay if we do it without him. (I had to learn how to text because my young, hip, very busy husband prefers to communicate with me that way.)

K-OK 2 feed bb if we send pix?

Kevin txted back—Green light. But send pix.

So I mashed the banana, as mom confined Sophia to her Bumbo seat. The the BB tugged uncomfortably at her Green Eggs and Ham bib. “I want to be the one to give her the first bite, mom,” I said, just in case she had designs on being the one. After all, she delusionally refers to Sophia as “my baby.” I just wanted to make sure she knew who was in charge.

I sat down on the floor in front of Sophia. Mom held the video camera, pointed at us, somewhat askew. Is this thing on? she asked, lens still covered. I pulled myself up to a standing position, popped the lens cap off, and pushed the button. Mom backed up, I can’t get both of you in.

Use the telephoto, mom. I said impatiently. I got up again to demonstrate. She played with it and started recording. “Sophia’s first food, take one.” I lifted the spoon, and instinctively, Sophia parted her lips. I shoved the viscous fruit in before she could close them. Sophia paused for a moment, her face neutral, then disgust transfigured her delicate features. Banana oozed out of the corners of her mouth. “MMMMMM….taste….” said my mother, in the background, smacking her lips.

Sophia smiled. She liked the sounds grandma was making. I shoved in another bite. More disgust. “YUM YUM YUM YUM,” said my mother, smacking away. Sophia smiled again. And that’s pretty much how it went—Sophia complicity taking bites, despite her obvious displeasure, my mother smacking away, and my clothes growing sticky with banana orts.

Three days later Sohpia had habituated to the taste, and even seemed to be enjoying it. She now saves her disgust for homemade organic applesauce (which I slaved over a hot microwave to make). Tomorrow, we move onto the truly exotic—avocado. I’ve thumbed my nose at the doctor-recommended baby food trajectory as well as the suggestions of well-meaning friends, opting for whatever I had in my refrigerator that seemed edible. I really don’t think what she eats now is going to dictate what she eats later--despite speculation to the contrary. Maybe I’ll pay for this someday, but I think if I feed her what we like to eat, she will develop a taste for it over time.

And my fears about her preferring solid food over mother’s milk? Completely unfounded. In fact, if anything, they’ve boomeranged. What if she won’t eat solids? What if I have to breastfeed her the rest of my natural life?

I take great comfort in the fact that most people eat a wide variety of foods. And sit up just fine. And walk. And talk. And lead rich lives. Sophia will eat in her own good time.