I'm Posting Because I'm Not Sleeping, or, In Which I Regurgitate My Day With Little to No Editing

(Yawn). Oh, this is much better than reading facebook in the pre-dawn living room. At least while I type I can close my eyes.

Good morning. I'm looking forward to a long, no-obligation-to-anyone-but-ourselves day with Anonybabe. Yesterday was awesome; we looked at a couple of apartments in the morning and finally signed up for the one we really like. It's near Lake Michigan, in Evanston. The bedrooms are small, but it does have 2, plus a sunroom, living room, dining room, and mudroom (ah, sweet separate living space!). Plus it has a lovely little deck and yard that stoked my fantasies of entertaining on a regular basis. Come on over from mid-July onward, ya'll. We aren't but a hop skip and a jump from the Metra Evanston Main Street stop.

After putting down a security deposit, Anonybabe and I spent the day playing through all of the parks around the place, and they are legion. A tiny toddler parked tucked between two buildings a half-block away. A larger park complete with basketball courts and large separate play areas for toddlers and big kids 2 blocks away. And then, if you're feeling brave enough to cross treacherous Sheridan road, there's a janky but charming park by Lake Michigan, where Anonybabe swung on the weathered blue baby swing looking out over a seemingly endless expanse of water. We met a mom and 2 year old at the first park that looked freakishly similar to us, and who I easily chatted up. We heard two women talking in what I believe was Italian in the second park, breaking into stilted English only long enough for one to say to the other, "Who suffered more, Prometheus or Job?" (??). We had a nice time at the lake park, where tons of dog-walkers were letting their charges sniff around. A lady who wanted to let her dog off the leash came over to ask our permission first. She let us interact with her dog to assure us he was safe with kids. Max slobbered on us a bit and then took off like a shot.

When we were leaving the lake park, Anonybabe said "dat waydee tay 'Goo Bah'; can you tay 'Goo Bah', mama?" I thought she wanted me to say "Good bye", so I kept saying it over and over at her request, until I realized from her intonations she was saying "Good Dog!" Once I said it, Anonybabe grinned to herself and we were able to move on.

Man, Anonybabe is such a little weirdo. I can't seem to help but see her this way. I don't think I'm going to try to change that. I sort of feel like the way we fundamentally perceive each other was written long, long ago. I can and will try to treat her with as much love and respect as possible, and stay conscious of enjoying her in the moment, but my basic perception has a life of its own. As it should. I had a good talk with my (admittedly senile) grandmother while visiting Texas last weekend. The gist of a particularly nice stretch of conversation was that people really are born who they are and there isn't much you can do to change it. Parenthood is the serenity prayer writ large.

So my daughter perplexes me, is what I'm trying to say. She's smart, but does things that I just don't get. Right now she vacillates between being sweet and violent. One minute she's hitting my face and the next she's showering me with kisses. I really do feel like her test subject for the way she can treat the world. She seems to be trying out different behaviors, seeing how I'll react, tinkering with the behavior and then trying it in a slightly different way to see how I'll react. I'm sure she's doing this with everybody to a certain degree - she's new to all human relationships - but sometimes it's weird to see the wheels turning in her head. I don't think of her as a sweet or loving person. She doesn't seem warm to me. It seems she approaches life with her head, although her heart is there, beating strong, behind it.

Enough with the vagaries & inner landscape descriptions. Here are some sweet things she did lately:

In our bedroom now, her bed is close enough to mine that I can reach it when I'm lying down. She likes for me to reach through the bars when we're going to sleep and hold her hand. She held tight to it for several minutes as we tried to quiet her down the other night, then said. "Mama? Mama, I wike it when you hold my hand. I wike it when you hold my hand when I am going to sweep in my wittle bed."

She approached little kids on the playgrounds we went to yesterday and asked them if they wanted to join her! "You want to go down de swide wiff me?" This is a far cry from her usual stony-faced silence or "don't wook at me!" I was stunned and thrilled. She won't be an asocial shrinking violet! Yea, daycare!

She also stopped on the sidewalk yesterday to lay down on her stomach, hands on her chin, looking down. "What do you see?" I asked, looking around to see if our future neighbors were giving us the side-eye. "Mama! Mama, I am watching some ants!" I couldn't help eating that one up with a spoon, even if she was sprawled on the sidewalk like a dirty little street urchin.