Monday, January 3, 2005

Rubyzilla

It’s one of those seminal parental moments. You see it build up, and then it eventually happens. “She took her first steps!” I’ve been reading blogs of other parents whose children are older than Ruby, and their kids haven’t started walking yet. The developmental charts said that it wouldn’t happen for three to five more months. I’m sure they overestimate a little, so that people with kids that start walking a little bit later than the average don’t feel like their offspring are broken. I wasn’t ready! I’m still trying to figure out if she really knows how to crawl. She’s only nine months old, for crying out loud. Nine months ago she was born! Nine months before that, she was a zygote. Now, she’s a toddler
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Stiff legged, she ambles back and forth from foot to foot, her whole body swirling, her head is an orbital pendulum fixed to the floor with reversed gravity. She pulls on her ear with one hand, and she does a circular wave with the other one. It looks like a strange combination of the Queen of England’s parade wave and a Shirley Temple dance. Ani completes the scene with a vocalization of a New Orleans second line song, especially if ruby has a rag or cloth in her waving hand.

She can make it all the way across the room, but more often than not, she takes six or seven steps and then WHAMs herself onto her diaper padded butt, pausing momentarily to look confused and to decide whether to continue walking or give up and crawl to her destination. I need to call my friend Leah, who is a scenery/model maker extraordinaire, and have her build a miniature San Francisco for Ruby to pillage. “ARRRGHHH,” she would cry as she pulled up the Bay Bridge, and tromped over the Presidio.

Like any parent, I am very excited that my child is developing so quickly, and I am attributing her precocious progress to a vast and awe inspiring intelligence. To be honest however, I’d trade the early walking for a full night’s sleep. When it comes to sleep, Ruby is what they call a high needs/late developing child. Since she was sick a month or two ago, she hasn’t slept more than three or four hours at a time, and she hates to take a nap. She screams at the world as she nods off. She hates to sleep in her crib. Her naps tend to be in my lap or on my well-padded gut, and although I usually have other things that I need to do, I love having that beautiful being at peace right next to me. I love you Ruby, and since you kept me up all night last night, let’s nap together and perpetuate your sleep disorder, OK?