new territory

I am here again admitting to the lack of knowledge I possess when in comes to the timeline of a baby.  Maybe it's not a lack of knowledge but a genuine shock as to how fast they grow and change.  Last week I was in a state of shock towards the behavior of my girl.  She took a turn for the worst it appears and is suddenly aggressive.  Hitting and the word 'no' have become her favorite hobbies.  And major sass on top of that makes me want to run away to Target and sip my latte browsing every row, spending money I shouldn't to make myself feel better.  That may or may not've happened.

I guess I didn't realize that we would be dealing with this at such a young age.  I spent last week in a state of depression convinced my kid hated me.  I was so alone and really emotional.  It's so difficult to not take offense when your baby hits you.  At least for me it is, and I know I'm highly sensitive, but when she's running at me with her miniature arm up and ready to swat me I want to cry.  It's the most confusing thing to deal with.  I reached out to some clients hoping to get some good advice and I was told that maybe she should see a child psychologist, maybe I should bite her back, or maybe I should spank her.  You can only imagine my horror.  A child psychologist?!  What the hell.  She's not insane, just a little feisty.  I don't think I could consciously bite her and not want to punish myself for the rest of my life.  And spanking is very controversial topic, come to find out, but not the path that we are planning on going down.  Needless to say I was left more confused and worried.

Then my dearest friend Jill was talking about this with me and she made such a great observation about this strange and challenging time.  She called it the 'gray' area.  The area that comes after they are so dependent on us but before they are able to use their words to tell us what is going on.  It's the perfect word and brought me a lot of peace.  For some reason I was able to visualize this 'gray' and it suddenly made sense.   I'm struggling to communicate with Quinne who is not able to talk but can understand a lot of what I'm saying and that must be just as frustrating to her.  She's probably thinking I'm a big dummy most of the time, trying to figure out what she wants or needs.  I'm so happy I was able to talk to a normal person and get normal advise!

I know this is far from over and David and I have a wild girl on our hands, but for now I'm going to take one day at a time and calm down.  I need to remember that this won't last forever.  One day she will have so many words I'll be wishing for some quiet time, and we'll be able to communicate on a bigger scale.  I hope to show Quinne how to be a good, nice person and that hitting your friends isn't cool.  

One day at a time.