More Notes to Self

Things that Vera has been doing recently.  

I think we have the empathy issue settled.  She is reciprocating at an amazing rate.  In the past week, she has spontaneously:

• Offered me her chewed food (I used to cut up food with my teeth and give it to her) 

• Picked my nose (like I still do for her)

• "Read" me a book (very articulately for baby babble, I might add, all the while pointing to the words and pictures like she really knew what she was talking about)

• Responded to my "No, Vera!  Don't rip up Mommy's coupons" by crying a little and then thinking better of it, and offering them to me intact for filing instead.

• "Blown" both of us kisses (hand over mouth and then "mmmmmmmm" for a long time before she lets it go).  Attempted the phrase "I love you" several times.

• She likes to bite our fingers (especially her father's ever since she was a newborn), but now she offers us her fingers to bite.  She probably thinks we would enjoy it too :)
  

Other things she's started to do:

• Associations.  I read her "Duckling's First Spring" today, and afterward, she led me to her bathroom sink where her rubber duckies were sitting.  It also knows that the book "What's Wrong, Little Pookie" was not "Let's Dance, Little Pookie" but LOOKED like it.  When I started reading the wrong book, she went over to her bookshelf and retrieved the right book.
  
• Nod "yes" and shake "no".  Mike taught her to nod after we noticed that she was shaking her head to anything that sounded like a question.  That's probably because we say "nono, Vera!" so often.  Now, she nods yes to almost everything (e.g. "will you promise to obey Momma forever" *nod nod nod*)  ...except for things that she really doesn't want to do (e.g. "Vera, are you tired?  Is it sleepy time?" *shake shake shake*).  The funny thing is that when she nods, instead of nodding her head alone, the weight of her head "nods" her entire torso to and fro.  HAHA!
• The fine motor skills in her hands are quite amazing.  She is figuring out switches and knobs and can manipulate very thin pages gently (when she wants).  However, she still refuses to walk.  She likes to hold my hands and "walk" with me, but as soon as I start to let go or back up an inch to give her a chance to be freestanding, she becomes distressed and grabs hold of me.  I think it's perhaps more emotional than physical.  Yes, she is a very dense baby (lbs/cubic in), but I think it has more to do with her just wanting to be held by me a little longer.  She seems to think that if she stands and walks by herself, I'll stop picking her up or "chasing" her around on all fours.  It might also be fear.  She was not too fond of the swings at the park, but then again, she still dives off of our bed and sofas head first.  
• All four front upon teeth came in at once in December, just as the four bottom ones came in all at once in August. 
  
• Vera's still an incredibly social person.  At the Mission Expo last Sunday, she was carried through the very crowded church gym by a myriad of people (all people we knew, not to worry), who were "showing" her to myriads of other people.  She was as happy as a clam and totally chill despite having been awake and at church for five straight hours.  She even rode home with my friends who had a car seat in their car, because I needed to stay for tear down of our booth.  By their account, she was laughing with the their kids all the way to our house and then played with them until I got home an hour later.  This social intuition is definitely one of her spiritual gifts.  This week, I'm interviewing prospective Yale students for admission, and if she is awake when they come by, she cruises or crawls straight up to them and asks to be picked up with her "up" sign
• Another spiritual gift I think she has is joy.  She jokes around!  She has several toy phones and likes to imitate me by holding them up to her ear and saying "hewo? Beh beh beh Blah" copying my inflections.  Sometimes, she even pretends to multitask while she's on the phone LOL.  Then, she'll hand the phone to me with a smile, and I'm expected to speak on the phone.  Of course, I tell the "person" on the other end how wonderful and beautiful Vera is.  Sometimes, she'll joke with us by putting something to her ear that is clearly not a phone, like a set of keys or her hand.  Then she'll do her little babbly act and crack herself up!  It is seriously SO funny.  I really need to capture these precious times on the camcorder.  We're just so enthralled by her big little personality that we lose track of everything else!  I pray that the Lord jealousy guards these gifts He has worked in her, that He will let nothing tarnish them and that He would guide us as we husband them.  

 Which brings me to the topic of parenting.  I think I'm finally coming into a parenting style of my own...specific to Vera, of course.  It's timely because recent articles in Parents and Parenting have written featurs on the phenomenon of helicopter parents -those parents whose identities are so wrapped up in their children that they can't bear to let their children do hardly anything lest they should have their little egos bruised or get swatted at by another child... or touch a germ.  Well, it's pretty easy to agree that some of that behavior can be egregious and harmful to a child's development.  However, I think that it's just as prevalent in Christian circles, among people who are called to have faith.  I think the genesis of much overparenting is fear.  We are afraid of the physical and emotional dangers that our children face.  We are afraid of the big bad world and all the nasty things it might teach our children.  We are afraid of our own inabilities and inadequacies.  We are afraid of our divine accountability to raise these children right.  I think another factor is desire.  We desire to be that Proverbs 31 woman; then, we might be proud of ourselves and more contented with who we are.  We desire to have blessings and honor showered upon our children;  if we do things just so, then maybe their lives will be oh so much happier than ours.  I won't go into all the motives behind such desires, good and bad.  The point is that we are at once seeking and avoiding to such a degree that we start turning to this method and that training program and those discipline techniques.  We take stands, we talk to other moms, we enroll in parenting classes, we read blogs.  We are so wrapped up in our parenting that we miss the child completely.  We fail to see her loving nature manifested on that divinely wrought face.  We fail to listen to her questions and her musings, even if they are, at present, incomprehensible.  In our effort to "feel in control" as parents, we fail in our role as the "guides" we were called to be.  Instead of raising them up in the Lord, we obssess over their shortcomings and bear down upon them.  We try this and that method, we reason, we pray for God to "fix" them, we cry to our friends.  The child, instead of flourishing as she was meant to do, and being loved unconditionally and encouraged to maximize her gifts, becomes a project, one we are determined to execute perfectly...if only we knew what perfectly was...

With Vera, I'd like to see how far true encouragement goes.  I won't be falsely humble here.  I think that one of my spiritual gifts is the gift of encouragement - speaking words of life.  That is not to say that I won't discipline her, nor read parenting articles nor consult my friends.   Those are all helpful and necessary tools.  But if I can simply restrain myself, I'd like to not clobber her with parenting "stuff"...and just sit with her and observe her and listen to her, enjoying her  melodious voice and her sweet smile... and nudge her with as much gentleness and patience as the Lord will grant me.  I'd like to take as few positions on parenting techniques and methodology as I can.  I'd like to dream as few dreams for her as I can, and listen to her dreams instead.  I know I'll be tempted to "freak out" at some threat upon her or some criticism about my parenting, but I pray that to her, I will be a mother who understood her and who was there to help her walk in the way everlasting.