Awhile back, Kristin Putchinsky (also known as ellen cherry), who I met while teaching at Park Camps, was telling me that she thinks the most important thing to teach kids is not to be smart, or to change the world, but to be kind.
I couldn't agree with her more. I don't care if my little girl gets a degree from Harvard and starts a foundation for some grand cause that's guaranteed to tug at people's heart strings and solve world hunger. If she's a nasty person, it's not going to mean much in the end. If, in everything she's done, she's steamrolled over others and ignored their needs for her own agenda, I will be a very sad mother.
I want my daughter, and all future children of mine, to be selfless, giving, caring, and thoughtful. I want them to be eager, life-long learners, focusing on what is lasting. I hope they all have less anxiety than I do (though it seems like Ruth is doomed to inherit that from me, at this point).
I love Ruth. She's blossoming into quite the eager, smiley, social butterfly. It takes her a good fifteen minutes or so to size up a situation and warm up to people, but after that, she's golden. On our recent trip to Folly Beach in South Carolina, it was all she could do to contain herself when she saw her cousins, the sand, and her grandparents. She ate all of them up in abundant quantities (metaphorically and literally speaking).
And while we were there, it was as though her joints and limbs slowly snapped together. She pulled herself up on anything, everything, caught her own falls, speed-crawled her way into and out of trouble, and started gesturing towards people and offering them things--food, a toy, or whatever she had in her hand at the moment. One of her favorite things was to watch her cousin Fintan projectile-spit one of her toys out of his mouth towards her, which set her into a fit of belly-giggles.
She's just such a happy baby, it makes me feel a little better about how clingy and needy she can be, especially at night. She loves to fall asleep on me or her daddy, and hates being put down to sleep in her crib. She eases into sleep when we're on a walk at night, or in the car, near a fan, or just during snuggle time. But going to sleep independently is completely out of the question at this point, not to mention staying asleep independently.
Our pattern goes something like this: fall asleep on someone around 8-8:30 (while watching Jon Stewart or something), get put in the crib around 8:30-9, and then right before I go to bed (10-11), I nurse her and take her into our bed so that her regular night waking (at least twice a night) won't cause me too much sleep deprivation (co-sleeping has proven to give the both of us a better night's rest).
This new strategy has enabled us to take it easy on Ruthie, who has thwarted our previous "cry it out" attempts with her persistent and high-need personality. It also means that I get an hour or so of private time before I hit the sack, which I need desperately, in addition to my sleep. During the day, it's all I can do to try and juggle her and whatever else I have going on; she often wakes before or when I wake (she senses when I try to sneak away to shower, I think), so it's all Ruthie all the time.
I keep reminding myself that someday this will change, she'll be in her own bed, sleeping through the night, and not needing to be held all the time. And I know that when she gets to that point, I'll be nostalgic for being needed. Oh, the irony.
In the meantime, I'm the proud parent of a babbling, happy, excitable, exhausting Ruthie. I have a lot of baby-proofing ahead of me, a lot of lessons in patience, and a lot of trials and rewards to look forward to. In the end, I just hope that she (and I) learn to be kind.