Note: WordPress acted up yesterday and wouldn’t let me login. I wrote this post yesterday and emailed it to myself. Fortunately I can get back in this morning, so here it is from last night.************
Baby is amazing me today. First, she heads for the bathroom, confirming with a little waving fist that she has to go potty. Then she tries to grab the toilet paper from my hand … and tries to wipe herself!!! Insanely cute and smart!
For dinner she wasn’t into sitting at the table but she did want to eat bites and bites of the eggplant dish my mom made over the course of the evening while crawling/walking/running all around the room. Food is better right now when mommy feeds me!
Then we spent a long, long time going up and down the stairs. Up and down. Up and down. Walking, sit/sliding, and crawling.
And of course, it’s Hallowe’en tonight. She LOVED the trick or treaters!! Was totally quiet and observant when they were here, watched them leave, and then started urgently signing “more!” over and over. “More cute dressed-up kids at the door, please! More, more!” And we learned her favourite candy is Smarties: they shake up like a maraca!
Long slide into bedtime. Oh well. As she was crying and I was rocking her and walking with her and finally feeding her and rubbing her back, I thought how lucky we are that we can enjoy this time at night with her. Yes, in some ways it would be wonderful if she would just fall asleep by herself and stay that way until morning. But in other ways it would be so sad. Putting her to sleep is our job as parents. We’re providing the self-soothing skills that babies just don’t have at this age. We’re teaching her how to calm herself down and go to sleep, providing the love and nurturing she needs to do that until – eventually – she can do it herself. We get to be her parents even more because she continues to wake up and need us. Right now I’m grateful for that opportunity.