Boddler

So when does a little person transition from baby to toddler? I don’t know the answer to this, and lately I’m perplexed. G isn’t quite the warm little bundle (or bunson, as my sister calls her) that she used to be. She moves, she talks, she yanks on everything, she laughs and gets other people to laugh, and she has attitude! And emotion. I sometimes say that she’s just months away from being a teenager.

But she’s not wearing shoes or even eating finger foods yet, nor can she outscoot our cat. She’s still my “littles.”

So I’ve invented a new developmental phase, for those of us baffled parents who are in that venn diagram space between infant and toddler: boddler. Our little wobbly boddlers, with their jagged little fractions of teeth, adorable entonations, rapidly cycling emotional states, and drunken little movements. My friend Gigi calls these the “golden months,” and I must admit I get it. I get that we’re moments away from the treacherous power that comes with being able to walk, climb, and hoist.

Anyone out their with boddler stories to tell?

I know the phase is short and soon I’ll be quietly looking away while my full-fledged toddler has a a full-fledged tantrum in some extremely public place. Soon after, the power of speech will render volume testing and a litany of “why’s” (all absolutely developmentally necessarily and adorably precocious in their own ways). So G’s boddler phase will come and go quickly.

But she’ll always be my baby…

I think I'm going to fire my equipment manager/ safety inspector/ industrial hygenist... oh wait, that would be me.

I am exhausted... becoming a parent entails all sorts of equipment decisions and equipment maintenance. Yes, yes, as us newbies are repeatedly reminded by veterans (which is an extremely relative distinction), babies don't come with manuals. The problem is, every stinking contraption that comes with being a parent does have a manual, and if you were to stack them all cover to cover, you'd have an impressive tower of Manualese. A dusty, seldom if ever visited, library of Manualese. I am of the generation of wifi, as well, so along with recycling all of the boxes and Amazon boxes that my plastic fantastic world now comes in, out go most of the manuals and extraneous paperwork with the recycling (or we would be featured in the show Hoarders). Yes, I don't read all the manuals; fortunately, the exhaustion overcomes the guilt. But in my activity budget*, I fail to account for two things: (1) that in addition to counters and floors, the many pieces of "equipment" (think everything from toys to crib to diaper genie to high chair to car seat to... picture gotten?) need either maintenance (batteries, adjustment, linens changed) or cleaning, and (2) that my daughter is growing, all the time, and will need new things or have things sized for her.

Sometimes I think that if you were to follow all the rules, be babywise, expecting what you're supposed expect, and have the happiest baby on the block, you'd need a jobshare just to be a stay at home parent (i.e. two people staying at home!). So you can't, of course, and you cut corners where you can, some here, some there, and you learn to drown out the judgy judgsters (mostly in your head, but clearly not always!). I often say that becoming a parent has made me more empathic, rather than more judgmental, because I am now confronted with the hardest job I could ever imagine and some days it feels like I am either a pin ball or a cat toy and I know all other parents feel the way I do. I may not let G watch TV (go me) but I did let her fall out the stroller. I may have an organic mattress (!!), but it's likely that a toy or two of hers were made in China. Point is, if I'm mentally pointing the finger at someone else, they could point it right back at me. I'm not saying I don't have values or standards, of course I do, but I feel a whole lot warmer to everyone, young and old, parent and not, because most of the time, we're all just doing the best we can.

Tonight I finally figured out how to adjust the car seat straps (make them go through the next slit up!). Probably should have done that a few weeks ago; G has been looking a bit hunched. I guess my jobshare forgot. That's okay; no judgment.

*Tip of the hat to my old animal behavior days... how we measure animals in the wild in their time between behavior states. I secretly would love it if someone would, without my knowing, observe me in the wild and report back to me how I spend my time. I'm sure it would be shocking at first, then very dull.

Grace

"Grace, it’s a name for a girl… and a thought that, changed the world."

-U2





It’s so fitting that we named our daughter after a state of being that I so often aspire to and yet can’t quite reach. Whether I’m tripping over my feet, our cat, or my words, I am so far from that. Grace seems to know something, a secret, about the world that I hope she keeps and spills at the same time. She takes such pleasure, such joy out of all of her moments, and her bouts of sorrow are short (though often very dramatic). The U2 song I quoted above goes on to say, “Grace makes beauty, out of ugly things.” I love this simple image, because it is such a message of hope for a tired parent, a frustrating traffic jam, even an unpleasant interaction with another. If we could all just take pause and allow the ugly to happen and then just let it go, surrender and just let it wash over us and away, and then embody, just for a moment, grace… then the afterwards is just so sweet, and so beautiful.



This is what my daughter teaches me. All of the moments are special, even the tough ones, with grace in my heart and Grace in my arms.