Day of the Drama Queen

Well, I think maybe that we’ve gotten a taste today of Little Miss C’s true personality and we seem to have one determined little girl on our hands. She wasn’t bothered at all when she came into the music room, got handed right over and started looking around and at her pile of toys on her blanket. When I set her down, she promptly started gathering every toy in front of her, picking up one after the other, putting it in her mouth, and then moving on to the next item. She seemed somewhat tired and over-excitable as she was rubbing at her eyes a bit and didn’t seem to want to sit still or focus on anything.

About halfway through the visit, she decided that she wanted to chew on Zac’s watch. No -- she really, really wanted to chew on that watch. And since it’s far from clean enough for a baby to suck on, Zac tried to get it away from her. There was a lot of squirming and wrassling at this point, at the end of which he was able to put it out of sight. After a brief, angry meltdown, I quieted her with lots of soothing while Zac cowered in the corner but it was very clear that Miss Chloe was not happy with her father. When he eventually tried to get her to look at him, she snapped her head away and held out her arm in the international signal for “talk to the hand.” It took a little time and a game of patty cake to gain her forgiveness and the rest of the visit was spent commando crawling around the blanket, rolling back and forth, babbling, and pretending to nap. Chloe did some of this too.

She said “mama” today, though I don’t think that it meant anything in particular. I suspect that she was just messing with me but I’m on to her. Bring it on, baby. Bring. It. On. She can also walk assisted, though with lots of wobbly hip action to accompany it – or maybe she’s just getting’ down? She also does this funny thing where she works herself up on her elbows and knees, butt in the air, and kind of revs herself up back and forth with accompanying sounds. I worry that this might be evidence of self-soothing behavior resulting from institutionalization. She also has a tendency occasionally to become disengaged and stare off into space in the middle of an activity. But then again, so do I. Maybe I’ve just officially entered into the “lifetime of obsessive worrying” stage of motherhood? That part, I’m going to be good at for sure!