Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Molly Jo Jo

I was reading Frankie's baby book again last night and feeling the overwhelming burden of Mommy guilt rearing its ugly head. I just can't quite figure out how to parent two children at once. I end up doing a sub-standard job on both, I feel like. Mainly I just focus on crowd control now, preventing Frankie from ramming her doll stroller into Molly's head, keeping Molly from falling down the stairs into the family room, picking up small pieces of tin foil and coupons that she keeps eating. I can't even begin to imagine having more than two. Seriously (and this is for you, Arlene), how is this possible?
Since I read about all the things that Frankie could do at Molly's age, I have been working double time to bring her up to speed. The problem is that just when I think she has nailed something, she completely regresses. I'll be like, hey Dean, watch this, and ask her to point to some object we've been studiously working on and then she invariably points to the ceiling fan. EVERY TIME. Where's Daddy? Ceiling fan. Where's the ball? Ceiling fan. Where's my nose? Ceiling fan. It is a sad state of affairs. But she does have ceiling fan down. That is for sure. At least it is progress from her previous response to every question, which was to stare at you blankly and then laugh as though she couldn't believe I would be stupid enough to think she would have any clue what I was talking about.
I do think she tries to say the word "baby." She lights up and gleefully squints her eyes in joy whenever I show her pictures of infants. And then she yells "Ba-ba." Now, granted, she uses this in other contexts as well, but she consistently does it when she is presented with a picture of a baby. Incipient brilliance? Well, when you add in the ceiling fan debacle, then maybe not. But don't tell that to my mother. As usual, when I mentioned to my mom that I thought she was trying to say "baby," my mom just nodded and replied, "She says a lot of things."

2 comments:

leedekam said...

The best part of adjusting to guilt is it doesn't bother you nearly as much as it used to. Now I can enjoy all kinds of things that I shouldn't :). Happy thanksgiving, Sask!

SDK said...

Happy Thanksgiving, Arlene.