This is what my baby looked like one year ago, give or take. She was pretty bald still. She ate most of her meals in her high chair. She could walk, she could run (albeit a little unsteadily), she could get into all kinds of mischief. She wasn't talking in words most of the general population could understand, but she could communicate with Mama and Dada pretty effectively. Also, she liked to walk around with two old cell phones held up to her ears. "Oh? Oh?" she would say. (That's hello, by the way.) She enjoyed emptying the drawers in the kitchen, stacking the cans in the hallway, and playing with the pots and pans.
This is my little Zannah-Banana now. She can walk, she can run, she can climb up on our bed and hurl herself over the side. She can help me bake muffins, she can take care of her babies by feeding them and kissing them goodnight. She can throw some pretty impressive tantrums, but I prefer to think of those as manifestations of a passionate little soul. She makes up for them in sweeter moments; after her bath, for example, I wrap her in her fuzzy yellow duck towel and she says, "Snuggle?" and I pull her on to my lap and rock her and kiss her, and we just stay like that for awhile, her damp little head tucked under my chin. She has hair now, enough for bows and pigtails. Her bangs fall in her eyes now, but I can't bear to cut her hair just yet. She likes order; every afternoon when we come home, she pulls off her shoes and lines them up against the wall, and then she pulls off her socks and trots into her bedroom where they are deposited in her hamper. She says please and mink you, and she is generous with hugs and kisses.
She is the most wonderful person I have ever known. Sometimes, I still can't believe she's mine. I look at these old pictures and I can't believe she was ever my tiny baby -- and I can hardly remember my life without her.
We spent the past weekend in Portland. I had an IB workshop there on Saturday, so about a month ago I came up with the brilliant idea that it would be fun to bring Matt and Suzannah along. Matt cheerfully agreed, planning to spend Saturday doing daddy-daughter things with Suzannah -- the zoo, perhaps -- while I attended my sessions. We cheerfully booked a hotel room and thought we'd have a grand time. Suzannah did so well three months ago when we stayed at the Great Northern in Havre; surely this would be a piece of cake.
We arrived in Portland sometime after ten o'clock on Friday evening. Not particularly early, but hardly in the middle of the night. Suzannah didn't sleep much in the car, so we thought she'd explore the room, we'd settle in, and have a semi-decent night's sleep.
I really don't know why we thought that.
For one thing, Little Miss was so totally over her pack 'n play. She's really too big for it, but we didn't have a huge bed at the hotel, and anyway, she doesn't sleep with us anymore. (And it's not like we wouldn't have let her, it's just that when she's in bed with Mama and Daddy she thinks it's much more fun to bounce on our heads than sleep.) Besides, she slept in it a few months ago with no problem. Well, whatever -- she wasn't having it. We put her in that thing and she screamed like we'd put her in a shark tank. We brought her into the bed with us; the head-bouncing commenced. I set up a bed for her on the floor that consisted of her pack 'n play mattress, her fuzzy blankie, her pillow, and Cookie Monster. Get in bed, I told her, as though it were any ordinary night. To my utter surprise and delight, she snuggled right down. I slipped back into bed with Matt and we spent a moment congratulating ourselves before a small blonde head appeared by my side of the bed and a tiny finger tapped on my face.
"Mama?" a sweet little voice said. "Tuck you in?" Which meant that I was supposed to tuck her in. Again. So I did. Press repeat. Like fifty times.
Finally, feeling rather hysterical, I suggested to Matt that we ignore her and let her do WHATEVER until she passed out SOMEWHERE, because isn't a two-year-old supposed to fall asleep after midnight? I won't even tell you what time we all finally fell asleep, but you should know that Matt and I were forced to spend our precious few hours clinging to the sides of the bed while our daughter sprawled in the middle.
I think Suzannah must have known, on some level, that she had better be a perfect angel on Saturday or we were liable to ship her to Montana from the nearest post office. Despite having not nearly enough sleep on Friday night and not having any sort of nap on Saturday, she and her daddy had a lovely day at the zoo, and I had a fabulous workshop and quick but fruitful trip to Powell's. (Powell's. It deserves its own entry. Trust me on that.)
We were so exhausted on Saturday night that after an early dinner with one of my colleagues, we decided to just head up to bed early. Surely, we thought, our darling daughter would fall asleep right away.
I really don't know why we thought that.
But this time, it only took ninety minutes. During that ninety minutes, Suzannah bounced on our heads, read Hop on Pop to herself while she nestled between us (and we tried to ignore her), finished the book and started to tap it on my face, climbed up and down and up and down and upanddownandupanddown, asked for water, asked for goldfish, asked for granola bars, demanded that the lamp be turned on, and screwed with the alarm clock. Finally, I scooped her up and plopped her in her pack 'n play and prayed she'd fall asleep before her howling had us all evicted from the hotel.
After five minutes of sobbing MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY, she finally gave up and asked for a change. She laid back on the bed with her arms flung over her eyes in exhausted defeat. I changed her and prepared to tuck her in between us, desperately praying she'd stay there, but she collapsed wearily against my shoulder and asked to go to bed. As in, her own. I put her down in the pack 'n play and she dropped to her pillow, wrapped her arms around her Cookie Monster, and went to sleep until eight o'clock in the morning.
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