Hello Goodbye

We’ve been spending a lot of time on “bye-bye” these days, which Lydia says with a nasal, Long Island inflection: boye-boye,waving her hand like the Queen Mum, lots of wrist action.  Boye-Boye when we shut the fridge, boye-boye when we step over the safety gate, boye-boye to people we pass at the grocery store, most of whom haven’t said hello in the first place.

You can’t blame her.  There’s a whole lotta bye-bye going on.  First Tereza, her nanny of over a year, moved back to Brazil, which is something we can’t explain to Lydia and can’t expect her to understand.  The day after Tereza left, we went on a trip to Cancun, and then two days after we got back we plunked Lydia into a daycare for the first time.  Plunked might not be the right word.  Try peeled off my body where she clung like a limpet and dropped kicking and screaming into an unfamiliar stranger-filled environment, then walked out the door listening to her wails of terror and rage and the sounds of her little hands shaking the fence that keeps all the kids penned into the toddler area.  If she was able to string more than one or two words together, I think what she would have been screaming was, “WHAT THE F#%K????!!!!”

We’re on daycare week three now, and things have improved.  For the first two weeks, they suggested that we only leave her there for 3-4 hours at a time (still unsure if this was for her sanity or theirs), which made for an interesting couple of work weeks for me and Ryan.  It also greatly increased Lydia’s Yo Gabba Gabba consumption, up from the three minute clips we’d showed her on the plane to a solid twenty minutes or so while we tried desperately to earn our paychecks. But now we’ve cut her off of DJ Lance, she’s up to full daycare days, and from all reports she is perfectly happy there.  My favorite note from them so far was, “Lydia loves to play peek-a-boo with the other children.  She will stand behind the toy shelves and pop out with smiles.”  Socialization: check.

Perhaps I think things have improved because I’m no longer the one taking her there.  The daycare is on Ryan’s way to work, so he’s been doing drop-offs and pick-ups, leaving me with a significantly larger chunk of alone time than I have had since Lydia was born.

Since that day, all the time I’ve spent alone in our house probably adds up to a few hours, tops.  I have a homebody of a husband and a small person constantly demanding my attention.  There’s been a small person following me into the bathroom when I pee, a small person standing outside the shower and staring at me through the vinyl curtain while I wash my hair, a small person needing to be picked up and put down and held and listened to through the monitor while she is sleeping.

And, as I’ve now had the pleasure of remembering, there is something phenomenally wonderful about being entirely alone in one’s own house.  The first day Ryan took her to daycare, I had grand plans to go to the gym, and instead I found myself sipping coffee at the dining room table and browsing an Athleta catalogue.  Then I went upstairs and took a small-person-less shower, during which I used a conditioning hair treatment that you have to leave on for five minutes and which hadn’t been used for so long I was worried it might have dried shut.  I tried on three–three!–outfits before deciding what to wear, and actually picked up the castoffs and hung them back where they belonged.  I washed all the dishes in the sink and then just stood there, listening to the ticking of the water draining from the pipes and the weird buzzing noise our stove makes.

That whole process took about an hour, and then I found myself wondering how Lydia was doing.  It would be circle time at daycare, and I pictured her, not yet entirely comfortable, sitting off a little to the side, sucking her thumb and twirling her hair like she always does when she’s anxious.  She’s still so little, and lately when she’s throwing a tantrum or demanding another bottle, I can forget that she’s just a baby.  But she is a baby. She’s got that baby fat still, a little muffin-top of it over the top of her diaper, and it turns out that an hour of alone time made me miss it, and miss her, more than you might imagine.  Saying bye-bye to her each morning is pretty nice, but saying hello to her at the end of the day is even better.

Just chillin' with my snack trap

Oh DJ Lance, you're soooo entertaining!

This small person wants you to tickle her belly.

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