Tuesdays with Sadie

6:45 Please stop crying and go back to sleep. Daddy had to stay awake to catch up on things after returning from a long vacation.

7:25 s awakes with a smile. She's been in a good mood for the last couple of days, bestowing smiles freely and generally just being a happy little girl. I don't want to mention it to her though. It's kind of like talking to a pitcher during a perfect game. I just keep smiling back and picking her up and kissing her fat cheeks.


10:45 A.M. I frantically look around the house to try and find the attachment for the net of watermelon I'm supposed to give her. The thing is basically akin to a kite, but all I have is the net or kite part, I've got no handle and string. I empty the diaper bag, which marks the first time I've ever emptied the diaper bag. We've got a heck of a collection of stuff in it. Sadly, none of the stuff is the aforementioned butterfly wand. I think what I intended to compare the thing to was a butterfly net rather than a kite. At some point while stomping around the house looking for, well, to be honest, I wasn't entirely certain what I was looking for, I just decide to hand it to her. As it turns out she's not entirely thrilled with cold watermelon and turns her head away in disgust. But with babies disgust ain't screwing around. It's how you or I would look if we were feigning disgust, but she actually means it.

11:15 She gets some bits of oatmeal and rice cereal to eat mixed with breast milk and makes a big mess of the whole thing though I have to keep reminding myself that she's getting better as her oatmeal slimed hand reaches out to grab the spoon leaving a long slime mark along my right wrist. And when she complains and whines as I clean her up I want to let her know that it's for her own good that I'm reaching the wash cloth beneath her voluminous chins, but that is the sort of thing that has to be implicit rather than explicit when you've got a baby.


2:00 P.M. After talking to S I retrieve the thing that I need to attach the net to properly feed s a watermelon. Except at first I don't have all the right parts and I struggle with trying to push the thing the net is attached to into a spherical type thing that isn't shaped to take the object at all. After five minutes or so I figure out that I have the wrong thing, also I read the directions and couldn't find any mention of the spherical thing I'm trying to shove into the net. And really the only thing I take from the directions is that the whole thing is supposed to be "fast and easy." I head downstairs with all the proper objects. By this point s is starting to pound the little table that goes underneath her bumbo as if she's a giant waiting for food and cranes her neck to see just what I'm up to. I want to make sure that before I put the watermelon in that I know that it all will properly fit. So, not entirely true. First I dropped the net on the ground a time or two and had to decide whether it needed to be washed or whether s would be all right with just a bit of dirt from our nice clean floor. Naturally I attached it. Okay, the thing works. Except that after I have the two child safety locks engaged and the watermelon ready and the little girl bending herself in half to try and figure out when she's going to get fed, I realize that I can't open it. I've closed it so tightly and the safety locks are so well engaged that I can't access the net. And I yank and pull on it for five minutes and feed s a rice cracker that I'm fearful she'll choke on, so I give her smaller pieces though these seem to almost choke her even more than just giving her the whole thing, while I struggle with the watermelon net until I just give up and feed her rice crackers and try to make sure that she's breathing after each bite.

Afternoon-As the day goes by she beings to lose interest in sitting on the mat. I cheer her on for a while in the bounce seat, and she graces me with some smiles. Later she spins around in a circle pivoting her small body away from all her toys, so she can face the carpet and cry. I try and explain the virtues of gross motor skills to her, but she just wants to hear me sing the ABC's along with the machine that shrills them out as well. The only thing that calms her a bit is taking her outside where she can sit on the porch and watch birds and flies and squirm around. The mail man compliments me on my cute little boy, but she seems unfazed. I remember back to a month ago when she would sit on my lap quietly observing the world. Now she is trying to eat both sides of the chair's arms or spin around to her stomach or stand up and bounce, what she does not want to do is what I want her to do, sit quietly.

5:50 When S walks in the door s gives her a big smile without even hearing S say a word, and she keeps smiling for the next five minutes, and I sense that at the end of these long days that she is sometimes as tired of my ways as I am of hers.

6:45 I read her a story. I consider it a successful story because she doesn't attempt to eat the book for the last two pages. After we read a second book that she doesn't try and eat at all I lean in to her and S for a hug before I depart for an event, and she extends her little arm so that we can have a big family group hug. I mention it to S, get greedy and try again. This time s snakes her arm in and leans away from me and into S. We'll have a family hug again some other night.