The RAINdeer

There are so many things I wish I had the time and elegance to tell you about our adventure raising Rain. Today she is 7 months old. Some days I feel like she is on her way to being a brilliant, kind citizen of this world. Other days, I feel like she'll be writing her memoir from prison, and I will be the person she will acknowledge as the key influence in her life.

I don't know how it is for other mothers; I can only tell you my experience. My experience so far is this: every single day, because of Rain, I constantly reassess the person that I am. Am I too stern? Too lenient? Do I show her how to love? Is she playing enough? Learning enough? I guess if I had to strip it down, I'm really asking myself, "What do I look like to her?"

The pressure is on, folks. The plain truth is, if Rain is a horrible 5-year-old in a few years, there is no one to blame but myself. TV, grandparents, friends--there is no greater influence on her life than my husband and me, but let's be blunt: I am her central manual for How to be a Decent Human. I am with her the majority of the day. No one is in contact with her more than me. *shiver*

This was our first Christmas with Rain. We watched her gleefully tear apart wrapping paper from all the gifts she received from friends and family. She was thrilled with the paper, and the fact that there were gifts hidden inside was fun, too. She was happy just to have us there to play with her. I thought, "This is Christmas."

So, to everyone who has followed our journey with Rain since I was pregnant at this time last year until now: Happy Holidays! Peace and joy in the new year.

I Only Have Eyes for You ...

My husband had Lasik done almost 2 weeks ago. This has been a trying time for all of us. Ladies, you should all know up front that Lasik doesn't actually improve your husband's home eyesight.

Tim: "Where's the remote?"
Me: "Next to you. Did you even look for it? Didn't think so ..."

So, to get the best rate for his Lasik, Tim went out of state where my brother-in-law works. Rain & I were left at home for three days to figure out how to survive without a mediator. Turns out, we need a mediator.

We had fun, to be sure. Let me just say this now to all those broken, forlorn parents out there with crying infants at home: just wait. When your kiddo gets close to 6 months old--well, it's golden. Yeah, they can still scream to resurrect the dead, but they laugh, too. They're all smiles when you walk into the room, and wait until you see them sit up and finally, yes finally, entertain themselves! And they eat, too! No longer does every single meal depend on mommy being present or mommy storing breastmilk ahead-of-time. Little jars of gold--baby food--can be bought/served by anyone in the family, releasing you from serving food 24 hours a day on call like IHOP.

OK, I'm getting carried away and can't remember what I was talking about in the beginning. *Rereading* OK, so Tim left town for Lasik, right? Well, our family dynamic changed, too. Before, I would've thought, "A baby won't notice if one parent splits town for a few days. They don't even care because, well, they're babies."

The little things shined a light on Tim's absence. I would give Rain her nightly bath and bottle like Tim does every night, and during the feeding she'd give me this look like, "How come I'm not getting my goods from the tap, since you're here? What's with the bottle?"

"I don't know," I felt like saying, "This is just the way we do it." When I'd take away the bottle, she'd turn to me for nursing, but change her mind and go back to the bottle. In the evenings, when Tim normally comes home from work, we'd get all energetic again. Rain usually takes a nap to prep herself for playtime with daddy, but at 7:00, we'd be staring at each other like, "What's next?" I couldn't start my work until she was asleep, so we'd just play quietly until it was time for bed.

I ended up going out more than normal. I kept myself out of the apartment a lot, in fact. When I did stay home, I found that I became too much of a putz with Rain. Is she cried trying to fall asleep (which she does every night), I'd run in there to save her (read: train her to depend on my presence to relax). Tim is so hardcore; he can hear Rain wail and say, "She'll fall asleep eventually." And she always does.

Truth be told, Tim's the one who got her to hold her bottle when she was only a few months old. I was too busy sMOTHERing her to think about her independence. Even when we leave the apartment, I act as though Rain's still a newborn:

Me: "Why did you put her in her car seat already? I'm not finished dressing, and she hates sitting in her seat as it is. At least give her a toy ..."
Tim: (*stares at me until I feel shame, then resumes casually getting baby bag together*)

Tim's home now, thank goodness. Rain and I needed our buffer back.

Epilogue (days after Lasik):
Tim: "Wow, the tub looks so clean. Did you scrub it?"
Me: "Yeah, like two weeks ago."
Tim: "Oh ... it's because I can finally see the tub floor."

AND

Tim: "I have wrinkles under my eyes."
Me: "You do?"
Tim: "Maybe I've always had them ..."

Crystal Ball

So, I volunteered to take my almost-four-year-old niece to swimming lessons. I see my niece regularly, but this is something just the two of us are doing. Her mama, my sister, is very pregnant, so she stays home and watches Rain while we go a swimmin'.

Syrene, my niece, was a butterball of a baby. Now she's a petite shorty of a kid, so people often talk to her like she's two. The fact that she talks like an anime character doesn't help. And she's clever. Creepily clever. She always thinks before she answers, and that's a skill most people don't master until they're thirty, if ever.

As I was driving her to her lesson yesterday, I watched her in my rearview mirror. She smiles like her father, but her expressions and mannerisms are my sister's. She can carry a tune, so when I started improvising, "We're going to the Y-M-C-A ...," she picked it up right away. We passed a restaurant we'd eaten at over two weeks before, and I said, "Do you remember when we ate there?" Before I could say the name of the restaurant, she said, "Yeah. I got a balloon there, but it popped." She was right, and I reminded myself that her memory is not that of a one-year-old anymore.

I took her to her lesson, and waited in the parents' seating area. I could see her through the windows. I felt like her mom. Would she behave? Would she play with the other kids? Would she make friends? What if the kids didn't like her?

After a few minutes, she was taking turns with the other kids. She smiled and giggled but didn't talk much. Her eyes were feeding in and figuring out like they always are. She paddled as the instructor guided her through the water, and I remembered the chubby baby she was that Christmas Day.

Today I watched Syrene playing in the water while she waited for her class to begin. I got lost in my thoughts. "That's going to be Rain someday," I thought. "She'll learn new things, make friends, grow up." I was proud and sad at the same time. Syrene's a great kid, but she won't be a kid forever. Rain is a great baby, but she won't be a baby forever.

Then from the pool I heard singing. The squeaky voice made me laugh: "Were at the Y-M-C-A! We're at the Y-M-C-Aaaa ..."

Tah-dah!

When I look at Rain's newborn pictures, she looks like most newborns (read: sack of flour). She was kind of like a knickknack: wherever you put her was where she stayed. I remember the day she finally batted at one of her overhead toys instead of stared at it. I was cheering, "Get it! Get it! That's right, knock it down!" To see her interacting physically with the world was exciting.

The funny thing about the way Rain is growing now is that I thought things would happen gradually. If I want to learn a new sport, I expect that practice over time will give me the results I desire (or something acceptable, anyway). But with Rain, she just does stuff. There's no real build-up to things; one day she can't do something, and the next day she can.

It's almost creepy when it happens. I'll look away for a minute, and when I look back, she's doing something I've never seen before. One day I was reading a book about the kind of things a baby should be able to do at Rain's age. "This says that soon she'll be able to pass an object from one hand to another. That seems a bit complicated ..." (*lowers book to see Rain passing teether from hand to hand*). Two weeks ago, I remember thinking, "I wonder when Rain's going to be able to sit up, even if it's just for a few seconds. She's still so shaky." My sister plopped Rain on the floor, and voila! Since that day, she's been able to sit up for minutes at a time. Today I was sitting next to Rain who was in her car seat. I heard a rattling sound and knew it was from the toy hanging from the car seat's handle. Rain had figured out how to pull it and make it rattle. It's hard to pull, and so I've always pulled it for her. She made it rattle again. I was like, "But you've only batted at it one or twice before. How did you--? Hmm."

Tomorrow: Rain gets her driving permit. OK, maybe not yet, but it wouldn't surprise me.