During the first few years, there is a newness to everything. There is the first breath, the first cry, the first smile and laugh. Genevieve and I are now well over ten months into this endeavor, and breathing, crying, smiling and laughing are now events that occur dozens of times in a single day.
We currently rest in a crying moment. Theo’s stumpy limbs beat against the carpet, his budding temper getting the best of him for the fourth time within the hour. The books Gen and I bought nearly a year and a half ago told us the hands-off approach was best, so I guess we’re taking the self-soothing route, though I’m not quite sure if Theo is the one self-soothing or if we are.
I hover on the edge of the couch while Gen sits cross-legged on the floor, two adult steps from the screeching bundle of giraffe-printed onesie and the fluff that’s supposed to be hair. But for Theo, two adult steps are daunting– a harrowing journey in which gravity and the curls of the carpet attempt to snag his toes at every step.
“Should we—” Gen starts, though she won’t finish the question, because she knows we shouldn’t, or we’d be going against the parenting philosophy we’ve bound ourselves to, and the biggest rule emphasized in those books is that consistency is the one thing that we must strive to achieve. So hands-off it is.
Theo cries himself out after a few more moments, pushing his torso upright to look around. His lip still quivers, but this bout seems to have passed. As he’s moved further from “baby” and closer to”toddler,” the meltdowns have seemed not to last nearly as long as they once did, instead bottling double the intensity into half the time. But the books say that this show of emotion is critical to the proper development of conscious passion and opinion.
There is a newness to this, just as there was with the first cry, and with that newness comes an overwhelming uncertainty. It seems that the second Gen and I figure out how to deal with one behavior, it’s morphed into something else, or reversed itself entirely. Just two days ago, Theo was content to crawl all over the house, and now he’s chomping at the bit to get up on his legs and terrorize us in all sorts of new ways. The books said there would be changes, but they didn’t prepare me for just how quickly they’d come.
Theo rolls up onto his knees, glancing at Gen and me to make sure we’re watching, then scrunching up his face in concentration. He plants one foot on the ground, wobbles and lands back in a crouch. The scrunch pulls deeper, his forehead wrinkling and his eyes nearly disappearing.
He plants one foot, and then, hesitantly, brings the other to rest beside it, holding a squat. His eyes widen and I know he is going to fall yet again.
Hands-off method be damned.
I dart off the couch, grabbing Theo’s little hand in mine. He looks up at me briefly, then scrunches his face again, staring down his target, two adult steps away.
One foot up, one foot down. My knees scuff against the carpet as I scoot slowly along after him, but with each step closer to Gen, he starts to pull away from my hand. Finally his little hand is wrapped around only my pinky finger, and then with a yank he breaks away. A wobble, a bend in the knees, and then another step— the first entirely on his own.
Gen smiles down at him, cooing encouragement. He looks up at her, eyes wide and a smile playing at his lips, before toppling into her lap and resuming yet another crying fit.
Gen sighs and shakes her head at me. “Progress is progress, I guess,” she says.
Perhaps there wasn’t much to those books after all.
Featured Image From: https://briff.me/2014/11/18/newborn-photo-ideas/
UF PRISM 