Exit the Baby
When I arrived at Edith's daycare to pick her up this afternoon, I saw that the remaining teachers and children were in the far back of the room. I started to head back there, but one of the teachers I passed said to me, "There are no babies back there." Confused, I looked toward Edith's teacher, whom I could see sitting back there with the rest of them. She nodded in agreement, "No babies. Just a big girl playing with the other big kids."
As I rounded the corner, I saw a group of three year olds kneeling around a bin of wooden blocks, pulling out pieces to build towers. Edith was right in there with them, kneeling in her spot at the edge of the bin pulling out blocks. She was so intent that she didn't hear me say "hello" and didn't even turn at first when I tapped her on the shoulder. The other kids seemed to accept her as one of the gang. At least, until she put a block in her mouth. Then they squealed. "Eww! She put the block in her MOUTH!" I told them that she didn't know any better yet, and the teachers suggested that they should help teach her the right way to handle blocks. As we left, one of the toddlers whispered to another her sudden realization, "Know what? She's crawling because she's a BABY."
But she's less and less a baby every day. Even though I have a hard time seeing the changes in her face as I look through the photo album, her manners and motions signal more clearly all the time that she's almost a toddler. I am realizing the cliche about time going so fast. You can't think of a given couple as "the friends with a baby." They only get that label for a few months, before they become "the friends with a toddler" and then "the friends with a preschooler." Don't get it in your head, because you had your friends over and their child was fascinated with your coasters and loved applesauce, that coasters and applesauce will be at all helpful when you have them over again in six weeks. Having a baby is a very transient state. As we're discovering.
Now "the friend with the dissertation," that's a different story...
4 comments:
True. We're no longer "the friends with the gigantic 10 lb newborn." Now we're "the friends with the amazingly large 15lb 3 month old". Can't wait to see Edith again - sounds like she's becoming more and more of a person.
Yes, yes, yes. I can totally relate to this. Especially to the one with the dissertation!
Also, we were wondering if it would be okay with y'all to add a link to Edith's blog to Harrison's blog homepage. We recently added a link to his cousin's baby blog and thought it would be nice to link to Edith, too.
Hee-hee. Okay that is really funny. I didn't think about the fact that I would be logged in as "mom" only. Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, "mom" is also known in this world as Campbell. Though, I guess I need to get used to being simply mom, too.
You're welcome to add a link, mom!
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