Gotta love Dad

As much as I vowed never to be the wife that hands her husband the fussy baby the moment he walks through the door so that SHE can get dinner finished, I totally am. But, the good news is, I happened to have married the best first-time dad there is. Amelia is going on her seventh tooth, which means that towards the end of the day, she's not all hugs and giggles. However, here's a quick little story that I hope I never forget:

I pulled one of these evening hand-offs, as described above, yesterday. I handed Grant a fussy little Amelia and took off downstairs to take care of laundry (sooooo important, right?). As I walk upstairs, I hear a now-silent Amelia, and Grant saying, "ya ready? Ready?" Before I could begin to imagine what stunt they were performing, Grant whisks by in front of me, bent over, shuffling backwards down our hardwood hall, holding onto the end of a blankie. Next Amelia's happy, round face and dimples, two teeth poking up and three whisping hairs slides by grinning at me. He'd propped her up on a pillow on the other end of the blanket, and was giving her a quick tow down the hall. As you can imagine, this was followed by some cackling. What would I do without him?

lost but not forgotten

I received a call from the tech who tried to retrieve the data from my hard drive, and the worst is true: they cannot get the photos. For $700-$2700 I can send the hard drive to California where they may be able to get the photos and data by internally entering the hard drive. This means Grant and I are either going to have to get rich or wait until advances in technology will make it cheaper to retrieve the data. Until then I have facebook photos, anything I've emailed, this blog and memories. If anything, when all is done, Amelia is old, and I walk through the pearly white gates to meet my Maker, I can see Him sitting in a big white swivel office chair at a beautiful computer desk, spinning around and waving me over to go through all the lost photos on His computer with me. Can't wait :)

Cash's "work-in-progress"

They've been working on this for a few days now.

You're the mom, do something!

Since my little sweetums is learning more about the world, picking up patterns and consistencies, learning routines, cause and effect, etc., she is really perfecting her "fake cry". She's been fine-tuning it for about a week or so now, and it's almost Oscar-worthy at this point. She's learned how to push her voice and pitch, and switch from the front of her mouth to a shrill back-of-the-throat cry, and really scrunch up her face to emphasize her opposition. We all know, practice makes perfect.

But now that we have some "behavior" issues coming to fruition, I seem to be having a hard time deciding what kind of parent I'm going to be. Do I nip it in the bud? Play tough mom and make her scream so she learns how to figure it out herself at the tender age of 9 months? Sounds like a lot of work, but good results. Or, do I try to prevent her from ever crying, creating a sense of great security that makes her feel confident all the time, not needing to cry because she knows I'll come at a moment's notice. Well, I have no idea. But I know whatever I do, it needs to be consistent. So, I've come to a crossroad that will have a huge impact on both of us for the next few years.

It's kind of funny, though, because I find myself walking to her screaming on the floor, wanting me to pick her up or what-not, and I'm just kind of staring at her, not really knowing what to do. Sometimes it makes her stop crying because she's confused and in suspense of what I'm doing. But I just don't know. So I just stare at her, her face frozen amidst a fit. I'm sure I'll figure something out, choose a new "parenting philosophy" that's somewhere in the middle of compassionate and stern. But for now, there's just a lot of me frozen in indecision, and real confusion on Amelia's part. I wonder, do all mom's do this? Or am I overthinking my responses of her behavior to the point of "no-response"? Maybe it's the curse of just having one kid, whereas with more children you don't have time to evaluate the pro/con of each response. I guess we'll just have to see wait and see what kind of mom I'm going to be.