Saturday, June 16, 2012

Toddlerdom

My goodness - blogger has a new look and for a minute there I wasn't sure how to create a new post. 

It could also be that I'm a little tired and not thinking clearly - db woke up at 5:30 this morning - feverish, as it turns out - and today was the retirement brunch I organized for my mother here in NYC.  As I said to Todd after it happened, it wasn't too bad given the fact that it was my family.  We're all just extraordinarily awkward with one another most of the time.  Which is strange and exhausting.  Db, however, was a sociable trooper even with a low grade fever and no nap - I was worried she'd melt down at brunch but I think the fever actually took the edge off and she mainly sat quietly playing with her farm animal toys.

Db's mommy phase has reached new and epic proportions.  A few days ago she started spontaneously saying "I love you, Mom"and "Mom, do you love me?" The latter question I attribute to mimicking the last page of the (late, great) Marice Sendek's Bumble-ardy, wherein Bumbary's aunt asks of Bumble-ardy "Oh my little buckaroo, do you love me like I love you?"  (answer: sure I do!) 

Why she calls me "Mom" is beyond me, since we have referred to ourselves as "Mama" and "Dada" from day one.  Perhaps her toddler superpowers allow her to sense (correctly) that I would much prefer to be "Mama."  Oh, well. 

She recently found me attempting to be alone in our bedroom reading (oh, the shame!) Game of Thrones; she promptly located the boxed set of the series, grabbed one, climbed up on the bed with me, sat next to me, stretched out her legs just like my legs were stretched out, opened the book, and declared that we were reading together. 

At the table (or, more accurately, the kitchen island that we use as a table), we have to drink at the same time.  Our conversations consist mainly of her asking me what I have/am doing and then expressing her desire to have/do exactly that. 

So, alternately exhausting and endearing and largely typical toddler behavior.  Stalker behavior too, now that I think about it.

Speaking of toddler behavior, she and I had the first really full blow out tantrum in public experience yesterday.  I was meeting a friend and her daughter downtown and as db and I got off the subway, she let me know that she wanted to go through the rotating exit doors by herself.  The exit doors, being exit doors, do not allow individuals to re-enter, but this point was pretty much lost on db, who immediately went bonkers over not being able to go through the doors "ON MY OWN" (though in the second that I reached for my phone to call my friend to tell her that, owing to extreme toddler behavior, we were going to be late, db made a run for it and very nearly slid through a crack in the between the exit door and the wall, peter-rabbit like).  After several attempts to get her up the stairs and out of the station failed and she was doing a great job keeping other commuters from exiting, I picked her up and carried her out, which filled her with rage and transformed her into a shrieking snot fountain for about fifteen minutes.  As she became calmer, we sat down on a stoop of some fashionable west village brownstone and endured scornful looks from many passers-by.  I hate people.

Meeting the friend and her daughter was nice enough - or I guess it was nice to see db play with a little girl about two years older than her.  She started really playing with other kids on the playground this month, and it's unbearably sweet to watch her testing the waters as a social being.  The ongoing downer thing about meeting this particular friend, however, is that she married someone who works in finance and particularly since we've each had a child and she lives downtown in a probably over a million dollar apartment and has a full time nanny to support her on days when her daughter isn't in her fancy downtown preschool, I have a hard time relating to her.  It's not as though money or related challenges are all that I talk about and I honestly don't think what I'm dealing with here is primarily jealousy, either.  I'm not sure what it is.  I just feel like she moved to a different planet where "problems" entail choosing between private school or two of the best public schools in the city (both of which she's zoned for at million dollar address).  I don't know.  What I do know is every time I see her (which is not too often), I always leave feeling really sad, like the actual friend I knew has been bodysnatched by a lovely but distant alien. 

Anyway.  I'm knitting db a sweater, but I will wait until I've got some photos before I talk about it here.  


1 comment:

Chellepeltier said...

And this mommy friend who is definitely living on the same planet as you (oh, am I ever) is just too damn far away! We need to e-chat at some point soon...I have weaning questions.