Today is a momentous day! Mia has lived outside the womb for as long as she was inside of me. Her progress amazes me. When we brought her home, she didn't smile or have much of a personality. She slept and ate, then slept and ate, she was quiet as a mouse, so I figured her for a very mellow and calm child. Now Mia is a spitfire. Full of chutzpah, a lover of life, loud, on the move, opinionated, and stubborn. She really is a combination of her Papa and me.
Today, I wrote "9 months" on a white index card as I do to mark each month (well, okay, I missed a couple here and there) and put it near Mia but not close enough for her to grab because of her fondness for eating paper. What can I say, she's still in the oral phase. Anyway, the Meemster really has not been crawling, just rotating and flopping on her tummy. But as soon as she saw the index card she got on her knees and lunged for it. And she would not be distracted. I'm proud of her determination and belief in herself because I believe girls need those attributes. I just hope I can foster it through her adolescence.
1 comment:
It is amazing to see our little girl get on all fours and start motoring. What intrigues me is why kids seem to go after anything but their toys. Are all of us parents fools for giving in to the mass marketing for kids toys? Do we think that our child will become smarter because they are playing with some neon colored cube with a plastic banana shaking in it? As our little Mia tries to get to places independently, she opts to go after the magazines, the power cords, newspaper, tray under the coffee table. It's as if she is deliberately avoiding the countless number of "fun" toys directly in her path. She'll change direction to go after a 3x5 index card.
On a different note, it is great to see her get from one place to another without us having to assist her. The other day as she was trying to get to a piece of paper a few feet away from her, she got up on all fours and with determination inched closer. As she was just about to reach her destination, she stopped crawling, went flat on her belly, and extended her right arm in hopes of grasping at the object. She was about 2 inches too short and ended up pushing the paper further away. She got back on all fours only to move backwards. She eventually got moving forward again until she got close to the paper again and then stopped just short grunting as she tried to extend her arms to grab the paper. I thought to myself, "Why not just put in the little bit of effort to get a bit further and assure that you can get the paper?" It made me worry that my little girl may always try to do the bare minimum to get by. In some ways, my own genes must be partly to blame. I recall many times in school, doing just enough to get by. Of course, for my parents, getting by meant having a flawless report card full of As. I guess if you set your minimum at a high enough bar, just getting there is better than what most others will do. I'd like to think my Mia will always go above and beyond what is required and that this crawling to the paper episode is just a fluke.
Post a Comment