Quirks

Quirks
Over the course of the past few months, I’ve watched my Angry Little Diva resemble some sort of a high maintenance, funny little girl. I wouldn’t call her so Angry anymore. Don’t get wrong, she certainly has her moments where I’m convinced that the sky will fall or that her head will explode from the amount of screaming that she’s doing. Overall though, she has gotten a lot better. She has changed so much.
Some of my Mommy friends say that they miss when the kids were “itty bitty” and just laid there staring up, taking in the new world. I don’t miss that. Not even for one second. While some of the Mommy’s would talk about how their little darling slept for 7 hours straight at 2 weeks, I would sip my 13th cup of coffee for the day and be sure that they must be overdosing on left over percocets from their delivery. Hayden didn’t sleep therefore I didn’t sleep. I remember one night, my clearly oblivious husband and I were out somewhere. I overheard someone ask if Hayden was sleeping through the night. He smiled and said that of course she was. She had been sleeping through the night for weeks. I stared at him in disbelief. Then I realized that he hadn’t woken up once to take care of her after 10 p.m. since she was 2 weeks old. Apparently, it never dawned on him why his wife now resembled a zombie. Obviously all new Moms go around with a cup of Dunkin Donuts in one hand and a dirty martini in the other and wear black circle make up under their eyes.
I thought it would never get better, but it did. Slowly, it did. One night I put her to sleep at midnight and she slept to 6 a.m. I was sure something horrible had happened. I rolled over, saw that the clock said 5:58 a.m. and woke up in a panic and screamed. My screaming woke Hayden up, but I can easily say that was the best nights sleep of my life. Slowly, my life began to return.
It still wasn’t easy. She’s a fussy kid, but now she’s hysterical. All of her friends started getting teeth. Not Hayden. My mother became obsessed with the fact that she didn’t have any teeth. Every time I would glance over, my Mom would have her fingers in Hayden’s mouth feeling around. I’ll never forget the day she discovered that one had come in. She was 9 and a ½ months old. I heard her screaming from the next room. “It’s there! It’s there! I can feel it!” And just like that, Hayden had a tooth. It was December, so of course all we asked for Christmas was Hayden’s two front teeth. Well, we got one. And now, at a whopping 11 and a half months old, she still only has one. She uses that one tooth very wisely though. She bites when she needs attention and I have to say, nothing is cuter than when she flashes that one tooth smile. I’ve come to terms that she will most likely only have 1 tooth for her entire life. And that’s okay. My grandparents only have a few teeth too. They survived. Paul and I call her our Little Can Opener.
Hayden does a lot of little things that I think are hysterical, but the “well behaved” Mommy in me has to discipline. She has this habit that when she’s with other children her own age, she has to crawl on top of them and sit on their laps. Again, I think this is hysterical; other Mom’s not so much. So I usually take her off them. I think it’s a term of endearment. She pokes people she loves in the eye with her one pointer finger. Me? Hysterical. Others? Not so much. The most fun game we play is when she takes her sock off (and by the way, she has the sweatiest smelliest feet ever) and forces the sock into my mouth. She actually has a weird obsession with her socks and usually pulls them off and carries them around the house with her. She even takes baths with her sock in her hand. I let her. I think it’s funny. I love the way her face lights up whenever there’s a Geico commercial. I don’t know how she knows it’s a Geico commercial, but she does, and she thinks it’s the “bee’s knee’s”.
She pants like a dog when she crawls, screams like she’s on a rollercoaster whenever you pick her up out of the crib, isn’t afraid of my parents 140 pound Doberman and pulls his ears, and throws her Cheerios off the high chair because she wants the “good stuff” (blueberries). She’s quirky and I love it.
So ladies, I do not miss the early days of sleepless nights. Truthfully, I barely remember a time when she just laid there staring at the walls. I’m actually pretty sure she was never that young. But then again, who knows? I do like me some percocets! Kidding!