On being Maia's Mama

From May 4

Brian, Maia and I had a full Saturday in this beautiful, sunny spring weather. I taught a class this morning but was finished by 11:00 AM, after which the three of us went to the Farmer's Market (as always) and Zingerman's (again, not unusual). The real treat for this morning's routine, however, was that we were joined by Jen and Harper! Both the market and deli were insanely busy (Oprah featured Zingerman's on Friday's show--no, Maia didn't make the cut--and so the deli was experiencing the "Oprah effect"), but we all still managed to enjoy our sandwiches and fresh asparagus and chocolate chunk cookies. Maia and Harper spent some time hugging each other, which mainly consists of bumping their foreheads together and grabbing onto each other to avoid falling down. :)

Then, this evening, the three of us took a 10-mile round trip bike ride downtown for ice cream and exercise. Sounds like those two things might cancel each other out, huh? Hmm. Anyway, Maia got a case of the sillies upon our return, and so we took some photos of her flinging herself around in her crib as we were trying to get her PJs on. She's our little stringbean, as evidenced by the photo where you can totally see her ribs! She's asleep now, after a long, sunny day with a lot of time outside.

Tomorrow is my second Mother's Day as Maia's Mama, and I think we're going to celebrate with breakfast downtown somewhere. Then, surely another bike ride will follow, and then Papa Stan is driving out here to chill with Maia and do her evening routine with her while Brian and I go to a coffee shop to read and do NOTHING. It's going to be great! :)

So, some thoughts on this Mother's Day. First things first: that term "role model" means an entirely different thing now! For the most part, I am with Maia during all her waking moments. To a significant degree, my behavior and my choices are her frame of reference for how to be in the world, and how to interact with it. That reality demands that I be reflective. It demands that I examine my own ways of getting through life. I've always been a pretty reflective person, but now those habits of mind have some urgency to them. Just in the past few days, here are some of the things that I've had to reflect on along these lines:

• Building new habits to avoid living a sedentary suburban life (as much as I can here in the suburbs!).
• What does "empathy" really mean, in everyday practice?
  
• What does it mean to be political? Why does it matter that my daughter sees me as a political person?
• The revised Golden Rule: Treat others the way they want to be treated!
• Managing difficulty: How can I help Maia be resilient?
• What cultural values and biases do I (a highly-educated, white, Midwestern, suburban female) present to my daughter as "normal" which might be particular challenges in the world that she's going to inherit? In other words, what is she going to have to un-learn to be able to get along in the world? Is there any way to guess?

I really love thinking about all of these things; spending time reading and thinking along some of these lines has made me feel more engaged with the world. I really dig that.

Second, along these "why it's cool to be Maia's Mommy" lines: our toddler is growing into a person who seems so very pleased with defying expectations. Remember the days when she was a mellow, go-with-the-flow, "easy" baby? Well, as I've written here before, those days are over. She lives life with a gleam in her eye, and while her spirit often makes us laugh out loud (this morning, for example, she said "butt" and then "poo poo" and then loaded up her diaper not 20 seconds later), it also can challenge those visions I had in my head of how calm and serene her toddlerhood was going to be. She's already started stomping her feet in disgust when she has to stop an activity before she's ready, and she's even employed the "Fine, I'll throw myself backwards out of your arms, then!" tactic when she's really displeased.

She has bruises up and down her shins from her playground adventures, and today she needed a bath because she had chicken in her hair. Her vocabulary is so wide-ranging that we've stopped keeping track; she's started putting pairs of words together into phrases, such as "Night-night, Mama" and "bike ride." She's speaking with new clarity, in many cases; this week the words "baby" and "flower" came out of her mouth very clearly and concisely. And she has a favorite joke, which is to lay down in inappropriate, incongruous places and say "night-night," all the while with an enormous, devilish grin on her face. Recent favorite night-night spots include the sidewalk in front of our house, on top of a playground climbing structure, and on Zingerman's patio.

This is the person who's challenging me to adapt, to reflect on who I am and what my expectations are. There's some really good karma out there in the universe, because I ended up as Maia's Mama.

(And finally, for the sake of recording a momentous thing in our blog . . . YAY OBAMA!!!!! Okay, I got that out of my system. At least until November . . . knock on wood.)