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.
my family tells an awesome story when i was small and offered my grandpa my giant cookie in the center of a 2 story mall in collinsville, IL... needless to say i apparently did NOT intend for him to actually take a bite and he was quite ashamed when i began bellowing!!!
ReplyDeleteps. you're a much better mother than I--no way would that teether have gone in my mouth, blech!
This is not at all like parenting, but your story made me think of our male gorilla who likes to food-share with the keepers. He becomes very insulted if you do not, in fact, eat the kale he offers you. I have become very good at pretend eating a kale leaf. Because it's against the rules to eat something an animal hands you...for good reason.
ReplyDelete