Here this is for you but can I have it back now please?

Leah appears to have moved on from needing to HAVE ALL THE TOYS.  She is learning to share.

Sort of.

It started with her blue elephant, which is this super-duper-funtime-learning thing with textures and teethers and crinkly-paper ears and the whole bit.  She loves this elephant.  Recently, we were playing on the floor with the elephant, and she purposefully picked him up and extended him in my direction.

I was mildly shocked.  "Sharing" is a fairly simple word, but the concept of "I have this thing that I really like but I'm giving it to you right now" is sort of complex.  In my completely amateur psychological evaluation, it seemed to me that in order to "share" her elephant, she had to acknowledge that she, the elephant and I were all separate beings (stuffed or otherwise.)

(Stay tuned for the part where I am proven wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong.  But for now, back to the part where I was all Proud!Shocked!Parent.)

"For Mama?" I asked.

"Ababa BABABA!" she insisted.

I'm no fool.  I took the elephant.  "Thank you," I said.  "Thank you for sharing your toys with Mama."

And she immediately burst into tears and started flailing her hands about in what was clearly an attempt to regain possession of her beloved toy at all costs.

A few days later, she was enjoying a frozen teether.  After said teether was sufficiently covered in her spit and slobber, she held it out to me.

I was understandably much less excited to "share" this particular item, but she was rather insistent.

"Amamamamama!" she said, which I assume is baby-speak for, "Goddammit, I'm offering you my toy, this is my most favorite toy and I will be insulted until the end of time if you do not show some interest in it."

This time, she chewed on one end and I chewed on the other, and this by her was an acceptable method of "sharing."

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking, "Ohmygod, that's totally gross.  Ew ew ew ew."  And all of you who are thinking that are totally right.  It's gross.  And, for that matter, it was a frozen teether, so it was very, very cold.  But I'm pretty sure that in the Parenting Bible, it says something like, "If your infant voluntarily shares her toys with you, you say 'thank you' and do not ever, under any circumstances, ever ever turn her down."

(And again, stay tuned.  It totally gets worse.)

By the end of this week, we had this "sharing" thing down cold.  She would play with a toy (wherein "play" equals "cover in baby spit") and then offer it to me with her Hopeful Face on.  I would dutifully open my mouth and say, "Om nom nom!" and chew on the toy for a bit, until she decided the toy was, in fact, hers and she wanted it back.  On several occasions, she would chew on one end of the toy and I would chew on the other end, and we looked like two puppies fighting over a toy.  Sort of.  I guess.

Then something happened.  On Friday, Leah thew up at daycare.  They called me mid-day at work to inform me that my daughter had upchucked in her crib and I needed to come pick her up and take her home.  So I did.  She vomited one more time at home, about two hours after we'd arrived, and then slowly began to perk back up.  By 6 p.m., she was on the floor, orange frozen teether in her mouth, as though she had not just six hours prior been emptying her stomach contents into her daycare crib and forcing them to bring out the hazmat mop.

Then she offered the teether to me.

I looked at the toy.  I frowned.  "No thank you, Leah," I said.

I went back to my Angry Birds.  She went back to her teether.  A few minutes later, she tried again, this time with a sweet, "Gah?" and her head tilted Just So in a way that would make a photographer swoon.

"No thank you," I tried again.  "That's your toy.  Mommy has her own toy."

At this, she became quite upset and began to pitch a fit in that whiny way that only a sick child can manage.

Fine.  It had been a long day and she hadn't puked in four hours.  I got down on the floor and chewed on the teether to her satisfaction.

Two things about this:
1) In case you're wondering, Leah is on the mend and I've not yet gotten ill.  And
2) I believe we've reached a boundary.  Fine, I shared her slobber-covered toy when she was pukey.  But this morning, Leah insisted that I chew on my own hair.  I am all in favor of her learning how to share, but there is something to be said for the idea that you can't share something that doesn't belong to you in the first place.

From Leah, with love.

I have a subscription to "Parenting" magazine.  This is partially because I felt it would be helpful but mostly because I was asked if I wanted to subscribe and get a free issue and I couldn't say no, and then I forgot to cancel it before I had to start paying for it.

But I digress.

I have a subscription to "Parenting" magazine.  I sometimes read it and sometimes forget that I have it, depending on the day.  It happened that I actually had time to read the November issue on the day it arrived (otherwise known as the day I sorted through the mail pile and realized it had been delivered at some time within the past week or so.)  I do enjoy it, do find the articles to be (usually) helpful and (sometimes) interesting, and I especially like that most of the articles are very short.  Clearly this was written for parents who don't have time to sit and read a magazine for an hour.  Well done, "Parenting."

There was an article in the November issue written by a dad about middle-of-the-night wake-ups.  "This will be interesting," I thought.  "I will read this, and I will learn something."  Because I do, at least once a night, have a visit with my daughter who has woken from her slumber and is demanding food or attention or a warm body to snuggle with.

The article, titled "Our Finest Hour" (Page 58 of the November 2012 issue, for those of you who want to follow along in your books at home), proposes that a baby crying at night is "like an opera - it starts out quiet, and then crescendos into a dramatic aria."  And this particular father gave it some thought and decided that when he only woke when the child reached the aria, he was missing the best part.  And so he started getting up early, before the child's predictable cry, in order to hear the start of the opera.

This melted my heart.  I'm reasonably certain I "awwww"'d out loud.

The guy gets up on purpose at 4:15 every goddamn morning to hear is kid wake up, and then he feeds his son, and then, he says, "We just hang."

I would not be outdone by some hipster dad.  I COULD HANG, TOO, DAMMIT.  So Leah and I had a middle-of-the-night "hang" session one night because she woke up, had her midnight snack, and decided she was not, in fact, interested in going back to sleep at all, thank you, and further, she had some things she wanted to talk about.  I thought, "I'll try that 'hang' thing.  It'll be fun."

Yeah, no.  I mean, it was, for about 20 minutes.  But our "hang" session was three hours long.  It included two diaper changes and two failed attempts on my part to put an end to the party before she finally consented.  The next day, I required three cups of coffee (in comparison to my usual 1) just to get through my work day.

"4:30 a.m. is a gift," this article concludes.

I'd like a refund, por favor.