Ok, before you read this post please go back and sing the title to the Fine Young Cannibals song from like, 1991 or whenever. Ok, did you do it? Good! Now proceed with your read.
Most of you know that in addition to my three-and-a-half- year-old-son Joshua, I am also the proud mommy of a nine-month-old girl, Sophia.
(It will fit well with the rest of this post to tell you that it’s been 35 minutes since I wrote that last line, because Sophia has been distracting me from my writing by being a total stinkpot.)
What you may not know about Sophie, however, is that girlfriend is crazy. Cra-ZEE. Crizz-azy, some might even say. And she’s driving me crazy. And wearing me the heck out. She’s sassy and funny and fearless and just crazy! She’s so different than her older brother in every way that it just boggles my mind over and over again. He was just too easygoing, and she is so…high maintenance! I mean logically when you have a second child you know they will be different than the first, but I really cannot believe how different her babyhood has been. She exhausts me! Her exuberance is adorable yet draining. She’s playful yet picky, sweet but stormy, and cute but conniving. She won’t let me relax for a second, and I’m constantly saving her from herself. A few seconds ago, she almost took a dive off my lap – I barely caught her in time! I have to dig STUFF out of her mouth every 10 minutes as she’s always on the hunt for foreign objects, and no matter how carefully I vacuum and pick up, she finds something bad to eat. As a matter of fact, I think she has a secret deal with her brother and/or the cats to bring her bits of contraband. Cat hair, pine needles, bits of food Joshua drops off his plate…it matters not! If it looks interesting, she’ll make it hers.
There are things I love about her craziness and things I really, really DON’T. For instance, I love one of her new crazy tricks, which is shaking her head and long hair side to side with a wide open mouth over and over again and making herself dizzy. It’s pretty stinking hilarious! Her other new crazy trick which I don’t love so much, is trying to gouge my eyes out. Any time I am holding her (which is like, you know, all the freaking time basically), she goes for my eyeballs with those stay-sharp fingernails (they are like razors no matter how often I clip them!) and I just have to close my eyes and try and bat her hands away with my free hand, while she tries to pry my eyelids open. When I am finally able to put her down and stop this game, she screams uncontrollably for awhile until some other potential act of mischief catches her eye.
Shew! Just writing about that wears me out.
Her other new favorite activity, which is both hysterical and annoying, is to try and get up on all fours while she’s nursing and latched on. Like she thinks I’m a drinking fountain or something! This does NOT work well when nursing in public. She’s also very into “grab-the nipple” these days – she has to have her hands in and on everything!
She takes short naps, screams when she hears the word “no”, gives me the hardest time about eating baby food, and hates to be confined in any way. And even though she’s been eating solid foods for over three months, she still finds a way, at least once a day, to poop up & out the back of her diaper. Not squirty breastmilk poops, people. Solid food poopie. Which I realized about 30 minutes after changing her one day last week, I still had on my forearm. Ick!
Right now as I write this, she is standing in her pack-n-play, alternately fussing and smiling at me, trying to decide which is the better tactic to secure her release. The smile is working on me. It is truly irresistible (and still toothless at 9 months!) Oh – she is a crazy girl, but I know if, just if I can survive her infancy and toddlerhood, we will have a whole lot of fun together.
