Children are strange and wonderful creatures. Sometimes it seems like Estelle is changing all the time. But in reality, I think her progress is much more sporadic, reminding me of Stephen Jay Gould's theory that evolution occurs by sudden lucky leaps forward, separated by long periods of essentially no change (how about that for retention from my evolutionary bio class at Olaf, huh?). Except, in our case, the evolution occurs by sudden lucky leaps forward, separated by long periods of no change or regression.
Case in point: the last week has been a veritable multiple personality disorder of parenting for me. Estelle came down with some viral thing last weekend and steadily progressed to pneumonia. All of a sudden, she has completely forgotten how to play by herself -- it's all mommy, all the time...enter "Kid Koala" who screams bloody murder and maintains a permanent leg-clutch position when I try to set her on the floor (I HATE parenting!); On the other hand, she's cuddly and wants to be rocked, an activity she's shunned since she started walking (I LOVE parenting!); I miss an entire week of work (I HATE parenting!)
Then the antibiotics kick in and in the last two days, she starts to feel better. Suddently, she makes a developmental leap -- she starts repeating words we say, including "cold" "go" "eye" and "mouth" -- I LOVE parenting again!
I've decided it's my challenge to appreciate the mundane days as well as the days full of developmental progress. Though, that's been made demonstrably more difficult in the short-term, since I'm now suffering with her cold (I HATE parenting!). Actually, it's made me want to regress developmentally as well. How the mighty are brought low...
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