The Wisdom of 10 Month Olds

Some people like their toilet paper rolling over the roll, some like it under. Some people like to cut the banana in half with a knife, some like to break a piece and let the peels dangle and turn brown like a creepy kitchen octopus. Some people give every second to their children, and some print a picture of themselves on a towel and toss it over the side of the playpen.

-Note: no babies were neglected during this hyperbole.

Maya, my smiley hug giving baby, turns 11 months old on the 8th of February. WHAT. She must be feeling her age and those mature curls coming in the back bottom row of her head because she has begun offering me physical life metaphors. Know it all. She thinks she can lay it on thick because I’m always around. And as I write this, Chicago is on the 12th hour of a snow that’s produced the same number of inches and I can’t even go outside for a walk to escape her wizened 10 month brows. 

Here’s how it goes.

Maya picks up one toy in each hand. 

She looks at me.

Then she looks at a third toy. 

She looks at her hands.

She tries to pick up the third toy without dropping anything. 

She eventually snags the third toy with her pinky finger.

She looks at the three toys in her hands.

She looks at a fourth toy on the ground.

She snags it with her pointer finger.

She now has four toys in her hands. 

She looks at me.

She eyes a fifth toy. 

She goes in for it.

She can’t add it to her hand piles unless she puts something down.

She tries and tries not to put something down.

But she must, and it all falls.

She cries.

Then, she stops crying and stares at me, all knowing like a moment ago she was just pretending to be a baby and now she’s 57. 

Then she moves to her lower dinner plate (aka the mat under her high chair) and eats an old cheese shred before I can snag it.

Scene.

Clearly she’s trying to tell me something. And I don’t think this is typical 10 month old behavior, because she only does it around me. 

Why? 

Maybe because she’s a Pices and I’m a Sagittarius? Actually, I don’t even know what those mean. I have just the amount of interest in astrology to keep me uninterested until every 7th month when I have to grade finals. Then astrology becomes mind bogglingly compelling. 

I can’t figure out the why, but in her “I want it all in my hands” thing, Maya is probably metaphorically telling me to “Drop something! You can’t carry it all!”

I’ve been thinking long and hard about it. Because that’s what baby metaphors make one do. The deep ones anyway. I’m not sure what I could drop right now. I’m working and taking care of two kids in diapers and there’s not much I’m able to “drop” unless you count my sense of smell and taste which I dropped last Wednesday when we all got diagnosed with covid. We are all decent but still have some symptoms and it’s not fun.

Maybe I could drop my role in Solly’s continuous plays? He’s been a very demanding director lately. The songs he learns on Daniel Tiger have him singing, “It’s okay to feel sad sometimes, little by little you’ll feel better again!” and, “When you’re feeling mad and you wanna roar, take a deep breath and count to four, 1, 2, 3, 4.” 

SOLLY: “I’ll be Dad Tiger and you be little Daniel Tiger, Mama - who is ANGRY, okay?”

ME: “In a minute, buddy. I have to get poop out of Maya’s hair.”

SOLLY: “NOOOOO, I really want you to be him NOW. NOWWWWW.”

ME: “Solly! Stop whining!”

SOLLY: “When you’re feelin’ mad and you wanna roar, take a deep breath and count to four.”

ME: “FINE. 1, 2, 3, 4.”

SOLLY: “That was a regular breath.”

ME: “Best I can do.”

SOLLY: “Don’t you feel much better now Mama?”

ME: “Yep. Sure.”

Maybe I should drop the winter outdoor time I try so hard to make happen for the kids. If not outdoors, they go nowhere. So, I try.

But going outside right now requires the perseverance of a warrior queen and the dexterity of a crocheting goddess. I didn’t know that behind every “smiling child under five in the snow” picture, is at least an hour of prep time spent arguing and stuffing and finding and arguing and whining and bribing and throwing and sweating. Northern snow babies are easy - and for the most part they get one zip up and a hat. Northern toddlers? Another story. 

Toddler guardians need to go through a health screening. And a mental/emotional assessment. And Olympic training. I have the utmost respect for northern grandparents who are primary caregivers. They are all retired marines. That’s the only answer. I thought clipping baby nails was hard, but now I know it was one of many skills preparing me for the “snow years.” This is the first year we have a child big enough to actually play in the snow. There’s more attention to detail with the wrist and ankle areas which are snow traps if you don’t cinch them. Last year, we’d go out for 10 minutes and take the obligatory snow-child snapshot and be done with it. Also, last year we had options of places indoors to go. And this year, none. So the pressure to make the snow clothes suite up work is high stakes because without outdoor time, Solly turns into someone you don’t want to hang out with.

I look up because I hear someone farting (maybe pooping?) and since I can’t smell right now due to covid, I have to really listen or the poopy diapers go unchecked for … a while. I think it's just a fart. 

Maya is doing her half troll, half bird call. She looks at me. She is on toy four again and soon there will be cries when the fifth doesn’t fit.

It hits me. Maybe Maya isn’t trying to communicate this metaphor in the way I originally thought. Maybe she’s empathizing with me not being able to hold all the things I enjoy right now. That this damn pandemic won’t end. That we have been the most careful people I know of and we all got it. I can’t taste anything. I can’t do improv or teach in person, or talk to my seniors in my office spontaneously like I used to, or look forward to things, or - 

She’s gone to her “floor plate” and has begun licking and sticking rice and cheerios to her onesie. She grunt/tweets with a satisfied grin as if to say, “Look Ma! No hands!”

I suddenly become very angry and literal.

“Yes, Maya, but the things I wish I could carry all at the same time are much more complicated and heavy than rice and cheerios! You’re such a baby!”

Maya claps. 

“I know, you are a baby.”

Maya hugs me. 

The me on the towel.

Before all the regular and added pandemic mom guilt can take over, I scoop her up and hug her back, all the rice and cheerios and all.