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A Very Good Year

The other day, as I watched Emma practice free-standing in the middle of the kitchen floor while maintaining a running commentary in her obscure dialect of Old Middle Infant, I was momentarily shaken by a vision of her no longer as a baby, but as an actual little kid. Given the efforts I've made adjusting to life with an infant (voted Most Improved by the Baby Association, Western Division), it's only understandable that I'd want to rest on my laurels for a while, or at least on my haunches. But no. Each new developmental milestone shakes the foundation of my carefully constructed little house of cards.

So, I've done the rational, responsible, adult thing and bought a new book about baby care ... and none of these sissy newborn books either, this one is real serious stuff, evidenced by the hard-hitting, no-nonsense title, "Your One-Year Old." Lest the potential buyer remain unconvinced, the book is subtitled "12 to 24 months;" a shrewd marketing move which should satisfy the most exacting parent. I felt better even before I read it. The very act of seeking it out earned me the approval of the bookshop clerk, whose stony silence clearly spoke volumes. Plus, the time-honored technique of throwing money at a problem began to work its magic before I could even get the credit card back into my wallet.

I should have quit while I was ahead because the book itself was a big letdown. Here's an example of the top-secret parenting knowledge available to the reader only as a result of years of laboratory trials: "Your boy or girl is officially a One-year-old until the time of that second birthday, when he or she officially becomes a Two-year-old." Sounds like it was ghost written by Dan Quayle. All I learned was where to put the hyphens in the phrase "One-year-old." Not exactly earth-shattering, national security stuff.

I put the book to appropriate use propping up the short table leg and pondered Emma's and my condition. I have to buy new clothes which are appropriate to her newly developing manual dexterity (still in the test stages) and her tactile interest in food. Used to be, a little puke on the shoulder was all I had to worry about. These days, anything smaller than a breadbox gets softened up in her mouth and rubbed all over my shirt while I carry her. We give her these teething crackers which are like shortbread cookies which have been allowed to petrify under millions of pounds of pressure at the earth's core. They look like cookies, they smell like cookies, they chew like slate roofing tiles. But hey, what do babies know? We give it to her and say Have a cookie. We might as well hand her a maraca and say, Here, try a chicken leg, and remember to chew fifty times before you swallow.

She remains undaunted. Only baby saliva contains the secret ingredient necessary to soften the Mystery Teething Biscuit into a brown glue stick which Emma rubs into my shirt, leaving a nasty little skid mark. This is a permanent skid mark, impervious to laundry soap, which lacks the solvent properties of baby spit. So, shirts must be wildly patterned, multi-colored, and easily washable. Preferably rubber so I can just hose off in the driveway.

In between loads of laundry, when I notice how fast Emma is growing up I get a stab of melancholy laced with panic. It isn't so much the feeling that I've squandered the fleeting magic of her infancy as much as the fact that this is only a weekly column and I haven't exhausted my arsenal of infant jokes. I still try to crack wise about midnight feedings, cradle cap, and meconium (don't ask, don't tell) but there's a hollow ring to it. Must be the first pangs of Empty Jest Syndrome.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.