I guess I would describe Leta’s crawling like this: crab with missing appendage attempts to circle room backwards. Her crawl is not the traditional crawl, the one where the person crawling can actually see where they are going. It’s one of the ugliest things I have ever seen especially when she gets to the yoga portion of the program, the part where her legs spread out to form a perfect line underneath her torso. All I can hear in my head when I watch it happen is, “Ow, ow, OW, OW, OW.”
Yesterday morning when I ran to grab the phone to call Jon and announce, “MOBILITY: ACHIEVED,” I returned to the living room to find the DVD player sitting in Leta’s lap. She was craning her neck to try and put her mouth on the cables running from the player to the TV. I let her bask in her new found discovery while I talked on the phone, but when I hung up I decided that maybe plugged-in electronic equipment might not pass the test when it comes to Things a Fit Mother would Give to Baby for Teething. Things that do pass the test: a lime rind, a candy bar still in its wrapper, and an old Adidas tennis shoe.
The past two days have been both physically and emotionally exhausting with all the moving and the talking to parents and the parents saying things that could have saved at least a whole year of therapy. Also, in addition to moving around Leta has decided to drop her nap. Like a bomb. GOODBYE ISLAND NATION OF HEATHER. Yesterday she took a 15 minute cat nap at noon and that was it. For those of you with children or who know anything about children you know that this behavior is tantamount to coming home at the age of 14 and announcing that she’s pregnant with a gas station attendant’s love child. As I sit here with no view of the future except endless days of a napless, backwards crab-crawling DVD eater, I’m thinking, “I change my mind. I think I just want to stick with web design.”
Although things are hard I keep telling Jon that he doesn’t have to panic like he used to when I would call him during the day saying, “T-Minus four hours until I throw the child at you.” I have my meds now and I can get through the day, even though the day may now involve a child who might cry THE ENTIRE TIME I feed her dinner. The other night I fed her spoonfuls of applesauce as she gripped her cheeks in anger. I DON’T KNOW WHY SHE WAS ANGRY, SHE JUST WAS. And half of her meal ended up being her own snot. Sometimes I feel like I’m working for an angry drunk, someone who gets mad for no reason, someone who can turn on me in an instant. Why are all female bosses bitches?
Yesterday I drove the dog up to a park because he hadn’t seen daylight in four months. I stood near the car holding Leta and she started screaming because she wanted me to let her down, but underneath my feet were about four inches of mud, and you know, newly-mobile infant plus mud is just one fucking laundry detergent commercial in the making, except I’m never smiling like they are when I’m in the dark basement shoving dirty underwear into the washer. I know I had realized this before yesterday, but standing there in the mud with my baby dangling sideways I thought, “Who in their right mind would take a job that required you to work 12 hour days every day of the week with no vacation and no pay?”
NO WONDER my mother is insane. And just think about your mother-in-law… DOESN’T IT MAKE SENSE NOW?