Triumph of a Lazy Mama

Every parent has their own style; I describe mine as "Lazy But Surprisingly Effective." Somehow I've managed to keep the kid alive and healthy for ten months, and she seems to be progressing pretty normally along all of the important milestones. She sort of ignores those less important milestones such as sitting up, pulling up, crawling and that sort of thing, but that fits in neatly with my Lazy Mama agenda. Who wants a kid that walks at 6 months? Then you have to chase around after them and keep them from trying to eat the extension cords and things like that. No, thanks, I'll take my Lump O' Child any day.

I bring up the Lazy Mama agenda because Liza seems to be learning things in spite of the fact that I don't incessantly drill the skills into her the way some other parents do. Take waving, for example. A friend whose youngest daughter is a month older than Liza told me that she learned to wave "bye-bye" at around 7 months. And she keeps coming up to Liza and saying things like, "Can you say 'bye-bye?' Bye-bye! Bye-bye! Buh-bye!" over and over again. Liza gives me this look that seems to say, "Dude, we're not going anywhere, are we? What are you waving for, crazy lady?" I have sort of half-heartedly tried to teach her to wave - when we look in the mirror we wave hello and goodbye to ourselves, and we've been waving bye-bye to daddy (and the cats) when we go to bed ... if I remember, that is, which is only about 25% of the time.

So imagine my surprise earlier this week when Liza spontaneously waved at herself in the mirror ... I wasn't sure she wasn't just flailing aimlessly like she does almost constantly, so I backed up and waved to the mirror myself. Darned if she didn't wave back, right at our reflection in the mirror. We repeated this a couple of times just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and she passed with flying colors. Then later that day she waved to the lady behind us in line at Wal-Mart - my little girl knows how to wave! And I didn't have to do a damn thing to teach her! Okay, she looks like a drunken semaphore operator when she does it, but still - hurray!

The other proof that my laissez-faire parenting style is working came this afternoon when we were cleaning up her colander full of toys that we keep in the kitchen. Usually this consists of me singing a cleanup song and dropping the toys into the colander while Liza tries to take them out faster than I can put them in. Sometimes I give her a toy and ask her to put it away, which usually results in her throwing the toy across the room, hitting me in the head with it, hitting herself in the head with it, and generally taking every action OTHER than putting the toy away. Today, though, I handed her a toy and asked her to drop it in the basket ... and she did. Just like that. So I handed her another toy and asked her to drop it in the basket ... and she did. So I handed her a third toy and asked her to drop it in the basket ... and she hit me in the head with it.

Okay, maybe her track record isn't perfect, but dude - she figured it out without me having to sit there for 10 minutes everyday saying, "Look, Liza, I'm putting the toy IN THE BASKET. Can you put the toy IN THE BASKET? No, sweetie, not up your nose - IN THE BASKET. Here, let me help you. Just pick it up, put it over the basket and let go. Let go. LET GO. Liza, please stop hitting Mama in the head with the rice paddle and PUT IT IN THE GODDAMN BASKET!!" See, that's why I don't even try that route ... I can't even type it without cursing at the poor kid.