So big...and yet so little

Our family project this weekend was to paint Edith's room. In an uncanny parallel to her Grandpa (all parallel items enumerated hereafter) back when (1) he lived in divinity school housing, Edith has been enjoying a (2) yellow room for the past two years. (3) In the unofficial, time-honored tradition of the neighborhood, we painted her room a color we had chosen on moving in, with the intent of returning it to its standard-issue bone white before moving out. Well, according to my inside source, the housing department has for the past decade been content to go along with this tradition, retaining the security deposit of only those people who failed to repaint properly before moving out. But this summer apparently enough of our graduating neighbors did a poor job repainting, if they did it at all, that the maintenance crews fell off schedule prepping apartments for this fall's new tenants and had to scramble. So the head of the housing department read all current tenants the riot act and declared that, in keeping with the letter of the lease (4) we all have to paint our apartments back to white now, with no further painting allowed.

So that was the weekend's excitement. Edith seems to have developed little sense of color hierarchy yet, such that she found the prospect of a white room no more boring or disappointing than a yellow room. Instead, she was very interested in the painting. She mostly had to stay out of the way, of course, but she did get in a little action in the corner, painting " 'tend orange stripes." And she proudly got to tell people all weekend that we were painting her room.

We moved her furniture back in this evening after the second coat had dried--and not a moment too soon, as we had been squeezing our way sideways down the hall past her dresser and changing table for 24 hours and tripping over the clutter of toys and bedding that filled our own room. Edith got into her crib as soon we had reassembled it and from there embarked on a giddy stream of songs and exclamations while we wheeled her around the room deciding where to put it. Having taken the trouble of moving everything out, Tom felt like it was time for a change of pace and so worth considering whether we might not rearrange the furniture. There were plenty of arrangements whose problems became self-evident the minute we tried them. But there was one slight modification that had the benefit of allowing us to fit Edith's toddler-sized chair and table into the room for the first time, while keeping a relative sense of balance and fit. So we opted for that.

What we didn't expect was that at the end of this whole affair, we'd find that it had rocked our toddler's little world. Because she had been thoroughly involved in all aspects of the project, on hand from the buying of the paint through the shifting around of the furniture, and because she had seemed so pleased and excited, we thought everything was fine. If anything we had thought she might have trouble sleeping Saturday night on the floor in our bedroom, but she had slept easily.

But right before bedtime tonight she asked me a little uncertainly, "The paint is on the walls? They are white? It's up there?" as if she wasn't sure, after all, what this had all been about. Then, though she sacked out in my arms as soon as I turned out the light, she woke when transferred to the crib, in its new position five feet further down the same wall as before, now under the window. She sat up and begged to nurse some more. We returned to the rocker, as often happens when I try the transfer too soon. The second time is usually the charm, but not tonight. Again she sat up and cried to get out.

She seemed anxious and disoriented. She asked for music on the white radio, then before I could turn it on, was crying instead for a sippy cup. Sippy cup in hand, she cried that the water was wet and she didn't want it. I tucked her in, sang a song, and urged her to sleep. I wondered whether she was sick or teething.

Barring illness we figured she would cry it out in a few minutes, she was so exhausted. But her wails got louder and louder, until Tom went in. Even then they didn't subside. She repeated "Mommy! Mommy!" frantically, and when I finally came, too, a bemused Tom said she had been beating on him as hard as she could.

She was in the hiccupy, short gaspy breath stage as I took her and for the first time, I had an inkling that maybe the changes to the room were upsetting her. I asked her if she was scared. "Yes!" she sobbed and reached for the door. So I held her and walked her around the room, showing her that it was still her same room, that all her things were there, that everything was the same, it was only that the walls were white and her crib was under the window now, so she could wake with the morning light. But her bookshelf was where it had always been, and so was her diaper changing table and her little toy dishwasher and her toy shopping cart. The rocking chair was in its place, and Mommy and Daddy loved her and would be out in the living room reading like always. Slowly, I talked her down to a state of relative calm.

She started breathing anxiously again when I returned her to the crib, but I quickly put on Miss 'Ria, hoping the ever-soothing Julie Andrews would help. Then I patted her back, handed her Elmo, and talked to her in low, soft tones about everything's being the same as before, until she lay down.

The toddler parenting books I've read say that it's easy to forget with toddlers just how young they still are. They start talking so clearly, negotiating shrewdly, moving confidently, mastering so many skills. You often lose sight of the fact that emotionally, they are still very immature. Seeing Edith so frightened and uncertain because her room had been altered, even though she had been part of the whole process, reminded me of this point. Tough as nails in so many ways, figuring out so many things about how the world works--she reminded us this evening just how different the world still looks from her eyes than from ours. We'd never anticipated that painting and shifting the bed would pose her any emotional upset. I don't think she did either, until she tried to lie down in that new corner of the room. And so we all keep learning.