Babies Just Do Stuff

So I have this friend who's daughter is about 6 weeks younger than MK. (A year ago, this seemed like a huge difference. Now, less so. In 20 years, we won't even think about it.)

She did everything different from the way we did it. She formula fed, she did CIO, she worked from the time her daughter was 6 weeks old. (I get how totally lucky I am to have been able to take a 10 month maternity leave, I really do.) Every Attachment-Parenting, hippy granola thing I did, she didn't. Every conventional thing that she did, I didn't.

Her daughter is having some sleep issues after a string of illnesses and teeth. (I hate teeth. Seriously.) And now she and her husband are trying to get their 'perfect sleeper' back. Since all of my methods are strung together from making crap work because I don't have CIO in me or in my soul, I know I can't really tell her anything she will find useful. Except this:

Babies do stuff. Toddlers even more so. They go through phases, are royal pains in the butt as often as not, and then they're just not anymore. They've moved on to some other way to make their parents crazy. I'm pretty sure that this continues until they're teenagers.

The Bug moved on from being weird about sleep to being defiant... I ask her not to do something, she looks at me, grins, and does it again, as though what I actually said was 'one more time, but with feeling!' Once I figure this one out, she'll try to get her nose pierced or something.

I really think that my only rule of parenting is this: 'kids do stuff. Once you've accommodated your life to that stuff, they start doing other stuff.' My primary task as a parent, I suppose, is to not get to attached to the stuff that worked in that mythical time 'before.'

Damnit. If I'm going to put this parenting plan in action, I'm going to need to spend some more time on that dusty meditation cushion.

Music

So I despise insipid music intended for children. The tinny, tiny voices of supposedly adorable kids or the faux-classical music constructed of bastardized Mozart and Beethoven makes me want to stab myself in the head. I'm all for singing nursery rhymes and lullabies but I also think that the Bug can handle any music, and can handle the "real thing" when it comes to classical music.

I'm not going to play gangsta rap for her, but when I play Mozart for her, it is from a CD of Mozart symphonies, not a cheery, synthesized version. The Baby Beethoven DVD we got as a gift is going back. I'll buy a book with the store credit. (Dudes, seriously, what is up with the creepy march of the puppets? I might not sleep again. And why is that teddy bear wearing a rubber suit?)

I think hearing "real" music is just as educational if not more so than playing fake children's songs for her. I also sing "the itsy-bitsy spider," but that's part of play, not forming her musical tastes. I'm a bit put out with the baby books that make classical music sound like brocoli, that is good for you but unpleasant. (I also like the green stuff, though, so I'm a bit odd.)

Since I don't actually know any lullabies, but have a head full of protestant hymnody, the other day to calm her down, I did an impromptu hymn sing after her immunizations. Don't knock it, it worked.

More to the point, thought, is that I think kids are capable of handling more art than we give them credit for. I'm not saying I'm going to take her to a performance of Pierrot Lunaire, Eight Songs for a Mad King, or a death metal concert. What I am saying, however, is that I can play her real music and it will help her develop just as much as the cheesy stuff.

Other People's Voices

My late mother was a huge do-it-yourselfer. She worked on her own cars, knitted, sewed, gardened, built things out of wood with tools, all of that good stuff. (Of course, she didn't always finish the projects she set her mind to, but she could have.) She was pretty good at most of it.

The problem for me is this. Any time I want to pay someone to do something that she taught me how to do, I hear her voice in my head saying something like this, "Oh, don't waste your money. Any idiot can hem pants. Paying someone to do it is just stupid."

And I do know how to hem pants. I do a decent job of hemming pants. Given enough time, I'll hem the crap out of a pair of pants. Oops... sorry, I got carried away there. The point is, if my pants are too long, I can fix them. But in this new mommy game, I just don't have the time or inclination to sit down and do it. Since I've lost weight due to nursing and never sitting the heck down, I've had to buy some new pants, some of which are too freakin' long, and I've been struggling to find the time to pin and hem them. And then it occurred to me that, much though I loved my mom, I need to tell her voice in my head to shut up, and get the pants fixed by someone who has the time to do it, if I'm willing to pay them enough.

This same inner dialogue happens to me about choices I make as a parent-- I make a particular choice-- how long I think I'm going to breastfeed her, to go back to work or not, pacifier or no, TV or not-- and I can hear the voices of various people in my life responding and telling me what to do. Then I hear the voices of the so-called experts in my head, and I feel like I might go a bit nuttier. (If you were wondering, the authors of What to Expect the First Year sound like every bitchy sorority girl I knew in college.)

What it comes down to is that, like my mother's voice on the pants, I have to shut those voices down. They only leave me confused and exhausted. At the end of the day, what I have to remember is that we're all just doing the best we can with what we've got. I can't make myself crazy with this stuff. When it comes right down to it, the correct answer here is to do what works best for my family. The decision as to what that is will largely be based on intuition and common sense. "Experts," relatives, and the random people on the street or in stores who feel it is their right to give unsolicited advice, ultimately, can back off.

And, yes, I'm taking my pants to be hemmed. There's a place right next to the yarn shop. I think even Mom would have approved of that.