Bliss of Life

I’ve fallen behind again.  Bean turned 9 months and then 10 months, and I didn’t even mention it.

Today she is 10 months and 10 days.  In her old, baby age she can wave, clap (but she has been on clapping strike for the past two weeks), take toys away from smaller babies, say ma-ma really slow, call for Godiva, whisper papa at just the right moment, give kisses when she wants to, wipe unwanted puppy slobber from her arms and hands (she has never done after from Godiva’s affections, only my brothers 8 week old puppy), mimic almost anything we show her, crawl up stairs, climb step ladders, dance to anything with a beat, shake her head no and at times say no while shaking her head, play by herself, talk to herself, walk the perimeter of the room using furniture and walls to stabilize her, feed herself (even though she chooses not to), feed Godiva lettuce (She ripped off little pieces of lettuce for Godiva.  No one showed her how to do it.), use her play gym as a walker, pinch, turn the pages of her books, drink from her sippy cup all by herself, drink from a straw, crawl up the playscape at our neighborhood park, play games that involve her papa flying her around the room, plopping her on the futon so she can crawl over to me, wiggling and panting in anticipation of the next airplane ride with papa, she can cry through an entire diaper change, squeal with delight at the sight of something that pleases her, become upset with me if she almost falls while I have my hand on her,  and lift my blues with a single smile.

She is wonderful.

This is my favorite picture of the ceremony.  The head monk is cutting a lock of Lily’s hair.

My mom and step-dad with Lily in the main temple.

Our little family about to leave for the big event.

Me and the Bean.

We went to Houston last weekend for Bean’s Buddhist Baby Blessing at the Thai Buddhist Temple.  Our drive took just under three hours and the way home was even shorter.  This is the first time we’ve taken a road trip with the Bean that hasn’t taken us double the expected travel time.  It is a milestone of sorts.

Before we left there was tiny dress fiasco.  Bean outgrew the dress I ordered online for the event.  That’s what I get for buying it two months ahead of time.  After driving to baby shops all over town, I found a substitute dress at a trendy chain store that will go unnamed, because it’s not really part of the point I’m trying to make.  The point is that the dress I found was perfect, probably better than the original one.  It was tunic-ish, like the dress I ordered for her and mostly white with a repeating golden-brown pattern and cotton, lace embellishments.  And because it was 40 degrees and raining, she wore white baby legs and her brand new Robeez shoes.  She looked like stylish baby royalty sitting in front of the monks as they chanted to bring her a long, healthy, happy life.  Her huge, playful baby eyes watched as the head monk sprinkled holy water on her head and snipped exaclty two locks of her precious hair.

We were in a small unassuming room used for ceremonies that reminded me of Ben’s grandmother’s house in Thailand, at least the way the house was when I was there eight years ago for our honeymoon.  The room had a kitchen attatched to it and a dining table and couches on the other side of the table, and to me, it was beautiful.  It was perfect.  It was exactly what it needed to be to get me out of the constant doing-and-doing-and-doing that is this stage of motherhood.  While the monks chanted a space opened up that allowed me to offer a prayer to my baby for the life this is before her.  I have learned that a mother’s prayer for her child is the most powerful prayer in the universe.  So I prayed that she has a life filled with grace and that she always knows her own grace because in grace dwells love, happiness, strength, wisdom and peace.

So much peace.

Our Bean has some really wacky taste buds.  The other day I gave her a lemon at a restaurant, with the intention of getting to watch her make a silly sour face.  But that didn’t happen.  She just starting gumming away on it.  She was getting all sorts of attention because who just eats a lemon and likes it?  Well, our Bean does that’s who.

Yesterday we went to the Wednesday farmers market.  There is an area where the children love to run through because several little water fountains shoot up from the bricks underfoot.  Notice that I used the words kids and run, not babies and crawl.  All the babies that were there only made a quick appearance in the fountain.  One burst of water to the face and they were done.  There were babies twice Lily’s age clinging to their mothers laps, and who could blame them.  But not Lily.

Lily couldn’t have been happier, unless perhaps Godiva was there.  But Godiva would never be there in the middle of a fountain with children running around her.  She is afraid of water and children, which was my point.  It never occurred to Lily be afraid.  Instead, she was on a mission to inspect each and every wet brick, touch every water spout, and pick up all the tiny pebbles she could find.  Never mind that she got blasted in the face with water from the fountains or that children two times her size were running all around her at top speed.  She had things to do.

I’ll admit that I was slightly envious of the mamas on the sidelines who had babies clinging to them.  They were sitting, which passes for resting in my book.  I, on the other hand,was dodging children and water spouts, while trying to make sure that Lily didn’t eat any stray rocks, discarded gum or just get trampled on by overly enthusiastic five-year-olds.  Each time I picked her up, she would fuss and cry until I put her back down so she could play in the water.  We did that several times until she was completely drenched and covered with goosebumps.

But you know what?

I felt a kind of proud to have a such a fearless daughter.

Here is a picture of Lily checking out some rocks by the trashcan.  It was one of my failed attempts to get her out of the fountain.

Lily is the one with the giant sunhat.  Notice the baby behind her who is over a year old and wants nothing to do with the fountains.

She is cutting her first tooth–one of the bottom front ones.  I still can’t imagine what she will look like with actual teeth.  She seems to be trying to figure it out herself.  Just this week she’s taken to reaching in my mouth with her little index finger and feeling around each tooth while she nurses.  It’s weird, but she is my kid.