Spirited

 I had an inkling when I first felt her move within me at just 17 weeks gestation and feisty as all get out. For the rest of my pregnancy, she never. stopped. moving. Seriously.

I raised my eyebrows when she came into this world with wide eyes, screaming and flailing with such zest that her 2nd Apgar was a 10/10. She spent the entire time under the warmer voicing the inconvenience of being squeezed like a lemon and taken from her toasty trampo-ute only to be scrubbed and lathered in the hospital nursery, but I couldn't blame her for that. It seemed a reasonable complaint.

She cried and cried and cried for months on end as many babies do except perhaps a bit more. Okay, a lot more. I remember one night when she was around 6 weeks old, she required a particular stride with a bounce for soothing. In effort to avoid her wails and accomplish a well soothed baby, I walked her around the house for 5 hours straight, 5 insanely exhausting hours, my biceps bulging, my aching socked feet treading a trail into our floors, my only respite being going to the bathroom with a baby in my lap who threatened to wail if I didn't get up and start walking again.

She wouldn't latch on to me to feed for weeks on end. 9, in fact. Ironically, the moment she latched on, she suddenly wouldn't have a bottle. I swear I bought every single bottle on the market. Every suggestion you could ever throw at me, I did it. She'd have none of it. I had to speed off during my practically non existent lunch break to breast feed her at daycare. During the morning and afternoon feedings the daycare providers would use a nipple I found that flowed so quickly Emery didn't even have to latch. The milk just dripped into her mouth and she'd swallow out of necessity. They told me it was just a phase—that she'd accept it eventually, that if she got hungry enough she'd eat, but they didn't know Emery. She carried on like that for an entire year until it was time to ditch the bottle all together. That should have been the clincher that enlightened me to the kind of spirited kid I had on my hands, but I was still too new of a mother to know for sure.

Don't buy your bottles before you have your baby!

I'd tell my pregnant friends.

You don't choose the bottle, your baby does!

I would say to them. And then I would watch dumbfounded as their babies slurped down whatever their mothers offered them without so much as the slightest protest on the 3rd or 4th bottle brand at most.

Wow! You got lucky!

I'd say,

but don't expect to go out to eat at all the first 18 months and don't think that your baby will be happy in her Daddy's arms for the entire first year!

I'd knowingly warn them. Then I'd furrow my brow, confused, as other Daddies bottle fed and held their content babies, and other families actually succeeded at taking their babies out to eat. IN PUBLIC!

Oh how she has such magnificent spirit, my Emery, the light of my life, the one who made me a mother and fills me to the top. But Lord help me, at times, she can be more child than I ever would have guessed she'd be. Truth be told, she was tricky from the start: tricky to conceive, tricky to push out, tricky to feed, tricky to soothe, tricky to put to sleep, tricky to dress. Maybe it was me? Maybe I wasn't patient enough, or I'd spoiled her with all my doting. Maybe I didn't know how to parent as effectively as I'd like to think or maybe, even as an occupational therapist who knows a little something about sensory processing issues and the infamous spectrum, I didn't know jack about how to use my career knowledge in mothering my own child.

Mothering a spirited child is no big deal (or not as big of a deal) as long as you know your child is spirited, can understand where they are coming from, anticipate triggers and react accordingly when you don't; but being a brand new mother and not yet comprehending the strength and vastness of your child's spirit can be incredibly frustrating and exhausting. Or at least it was for me.

In the first year and a half (and sometimes still), she fussed and fussed and fussed. She didn't fuss without reason; of course, there were happenings that were real concerns for her. Things that seemed insignificant to me, things I couldn't always predict, like a crooked sock seam or receiving the yellow cup when she was, unbeknownst to me, expecting a purple one.  To her they were instances that turned her world upside down with show stopping drama. She's thrown flailing, sobbing, floor wallowing tantrums for 35 plus minutes in a room by herself just because I opened the curtains and she preferred them closed. Without warning she's crumpled her entire body to the ground in a limp noodle flash if someone (usually me) opposes her on even the teensiest issue (i.e. No, Emery, you cannot play with the pizza cutter). She has frequently repeated a question over and over with such perseverance and hardly a pause between repetitions that even if I don't have the answer, I just make one right up. She crashed her body into walls and floors and people to fulfill whatever strong sensory input her developing nervous system was seeking. At one slightly embarrassing stage in her life, she was a head banger (so glad that's over!). She jumps, squeals, and says "no" just as any toddler does, except perhaps more.

These days, she thinks with her entire body and will push a chair across the house to climb up onto a dresser and obtain the toy she saw from a distance instead of just asking me for it. She's curious, imaginative, and into absolutely everything. She has engaging pretend conversation with "people" in the sky, makes birthday cake from bath water, and digs in drawers for that one thing she saw 3 months ago and still remembers it's location. She can somersault across and entire room, and spin until she can't stand up anymore.

To speak to her when she's riling up, I need touch her gently at her level and make eye contact or her persistence will deafen her. I had to teach her to "blow out the candles," count to 12 (or any random number) or jump in place 10 times when she is buzzing too strongly from overwhelm and excitement. Our latest success at winding back down is for her to "take a break" from whatever situation overwhelms her by walking to her room (or quiet space if we're somewhere else) to read books and then "come back when you're ready." She self regulates her break, and it's my guess that she does it so eagerly for the production of the return. She most loves to come back, announcing loudly, "I'm baaaaaaaack! I came back, Mama!"  I unfailingly greet her as if she's been gone for days. She's a sucker for a good reaction, that girl of mine. She knows the rules well, but breaks them often.  Often as in all the time. She tests my boundaries repeatedly, even though I am just as persistent as she. And just as she was as a fetus in my womb, she never stops moving, even her restless sleep resembles a flopping fish out of water.

It wasn't until just before Eve was born, that I finally conceded that Emery's nature was stronger than my nurture, and to be honest, it wasn't until very recently, that I finally embraced her gusto without fighting it. Unfortunately, it took me until just after Eve's arrival (and recognition of Eve's stark contrast in temperament to her sister) that I confirmed all those Emery moments weren't for a lack of patience on my part or poor behavior on hers, but rather a result of her enthusiasm for life, her intense emotions and intuitive radar of sensitivity, incredible perception, and revving energy that in my opinion is much more extreme than the average toddler's but still short of crossing over into the special needs realm of sensory processing disorders.

Though she is sensitive and persistent and intense and energetic in a combination of ways that could make this mother insane did I not have a good understanding of her, I think someday it will be these traits precisely that allow her, if she so chooses, to take this world by storm.

Having a spirited child means that I have moments (lots in fact) where she could be perceived as a handful or I could be assumed as a mother who doesn't give her child boundaries (but I do--sometimes with generous barricades). I could be that mother you saw in the grocery store with the screaming, ill behaved child that just won't sit down in the grocery cart. I could be the mom you sat next to at story time with the kid that wouldn't stay put or quiet during the story and distracted your kid from having a perfectly lovely story time. I could be the mother of the girl that pushed your kid down the slide when she didn't want to be pushed or barreled over your poor child to get to the swings. I could be the mom with the oily hair and no makeup aside from smeared mascara because her daughter was too into everything at home for me to have time to get ready myself. I could be because I am.

But, I'm also the mom of the 2 year old girl that has this conversation with her 5 month old sister:

Emery: Oh, Evie! Hello my sweetheart! You are sooooo cute, Evie!
Eve: (smiling at her big sister) Coooo!!!
Emery: Awwww, I see you smiling! Good job, Evie! Good job sweet pea!
Eve: (still smiling and now squeaking): Squeee!!!  
Emery: I hear you, Eve! Emery here! I looooooove you, Evie! I looooooove you!!!!! 

(I know, I know, be still my beating heart, right?).

I'm also the mom of the girl that bellows a booming "Hiiiii!" to practically everyone in public and then goes on to introduce me as “Mama" and her sister as "My Evie" and subsequently wins over even the most sheepish or hurried of strangers with her loud chatter and sugary smiles. I'm the mom of the kid that is above average (if I dare say so myself) at her parent led gymnastics class because she is so obsessed with flipping and spinning, jumping and balancing on things high off the ground. I'm the mother of the girl that can make her sister laugh harder than anyone else can with her wild antics. I'm the mother of the girl whose ability to notice every single detail (like who painted what picture at a party 4 mos ago, and can label whose mother or father belongs to which child as they file in to pick them up at her mother's day out program) seems to be a gift of sorts. I'm the mother of a girl that can memorize songs lickity split and entertain me endlessly with belting renditions of them. I am, indeed, the mother of a spirited child.

And in fact, I wouldn't trade the extra spirited tantrums and iron clad will for a temperment that didn't have them because I'm pretty darn sure that absolutely everything I most adore about Emery is because of the bounty of her spirit, handful that it is.

Carry on, spirited little cotton top of mine. You are perfect, incredibly, fantastically, beautifully perfect just as you are.