My daughter and
second generation Dissident Daughter, Adeline, has always been active, mobile,
energetic, and agile.
In utero, on two separate occasions, both our nurse practitioner and busy, in-demand obstetrician paused during appointments with us and spent extra time just to marvel at how she would flip and turn in my womb and how her heart rate would fluctuate because of her antics.
She came rip
roaring into the world in less than 24 minutes upon our arrival to the hospital
leaving me no time for any pain reducing meds and sending the medical staff
scrambling to even have a room ready for delivery. She was over a week late but
when she was ready, she was ready!
At her one-day old appointment with the pediatrician in the hospital, the pediatrician remarked how she was stronger than some infants of a couple months old because she could control her upper body when being pulled up by her arms.
At six months old when I was helping LJ brush his teeth in the bathroom, we heard something similar to what it would sound like if there was fish flopping down our hallway and there was Adeline, putting together a combination of a fish flop, a roll, and an army crawl in order to move herself into the action.
At seven months she was easily pulling herself up to standing, at nine months she was walking and at eleven months she was near running. For those without kids or for those who may have forgotten, she hit these milestones well ahead of when she was “supposed” to.
This post is by no means a post just for me to brag about my daughter. While I DO think my daughter is special, I clearly understand that every child hits milestones at a different rate and it usually has no predictive value about how “successful” they will be later in life.
Rather, this post is somewhat of a continuation from Kristen’s latest post entitled “Be a Goddamn Cheetah” where she talked about the many ways that the world sent her “taming” messages as a little girl. After writing that post, Kristen asked me if I had a recent example of trying to be tamed. While I had many, I explained to her that these days I was more cognizant of not trying to tame my own daughter and provided the following example:
As already mentioned, Adeline loves to MOVE. For Christmas this year we got the kids a joint gift – a popular item these days called The Nugget. It is basically a couch for kids that can be taken apart and utilized for whatever their imaginations desire with popular creations being a fort and a slide. LJ loves taking the top part off of The Nugget setting it up on our real couch on an angle so that he can then slide all the way from the top of our real couch to the living room floor. He could play this for hours….and so could Adeline.
The issue is that Adeline is so tiny that she starts at the top and flips all the way to the bottom. One time she went so fast that Larry and I thought she almost broke her neck. We started not allowing them to make a slide unless they were under close supervision. LJ couldn’t understand why so we tried to simplify it and started saying “because Adeline gets too crazy.”
The same goes for our king bed. LJ loves to play and roll on our bed while we are getting ready for the day. However, Adeline is still too young to understand where her body is in space and she would flip right off the edge of the bed if we let her on it unsupervised. So again, explaining to LJ why he can’t let Adeline on to the bed with him we simplified it and said “because she gets too crazy.”
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready and LJ got onto our bed to play. I was in the other room getting ready and heard him tell Adeline that she could not get on the bed because “you ARE too crazy.” Though he transformed the words a little bit from us saying “she gets too crazy” to “you are too crazy,” I knew what LJ Was trying to do. I knew that he did not mean any harm by it. He’s actually a rule follower and was just trying to keep her off the bed as we had asked. However, my heart skipped a beat and if I was a cartoon character, one would have seen a light bulb appear above my head. I thought aloud to myself, “I hope to God nobody EVER tells you that again in your life. You are not too crazy, little girl, nor do you get too crazy. You are a vibrant, active little girl who knows no fear, who knows no cage, and who knows no taming. I hope you stay crazy forever.”
Though Larry and I started the “too crazy” thing to keep her safe, which IS our number one job as parents, it kind of morphed into something else when I heard someone else saying it to her. I already knew this, but was reminded again of how our words have meaning and how especially with kids we need to be intentional about the phrases we use them with them.
Adeline, I hope that you are always “too crazy.” Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Amy who was crazy enough to run and qualify for the Boston Marathon. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Jill who is crazy enough almost every summer to go on a road trip across the US driving hours upon hours to spend time with her family and see the beauty of America. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Anne who was crazy enough to pursue her passion as a religion major even though she was told she would make no money doing it. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Kristen who was crazy enough to move to California without knowing anyone simply because she felt the mountains were calling her. And maybe you will be crazy like me – crazy enough to write this blog and to care about keeping other women “crazy” and untamed.
In utero, on two separate occasions, both our nurse practitioner and busy, in-demand obstetrician paused during appointments with us and spent extra time just to marvel at how she would flip and turn in my womb and how her heart rate would fluctuate because of her antics.
She came rip
roaring into the world in less than 24 minutes upon our arrival to the hospital
leaving me no time for any pain reducing meds and sending the medical staff
scrambling to even have a room ready for delivery. She was over a week late but
when she was ready, she was ready!At her one-day old appointment with the pediatrician in the hospital, the pediatrician remarked how she was stronger than some infants of a couple months old because she could control her upper body when being pulled up by her arms.
At six months old when I was helping LJ brush his teeth in the bathroom, we heard something similar to what it would sound like if there was fish flopping down our hallway and there was Adeline, putting together a combination of a fish flop, a roll, and an army crawl in order to move herself into the action.
At seven months she was easily pulling herself up to standing, at nine months she was walking and at eleven months she was near running. For those without kids or for those who may have forgotten, she hit these milestones well ahead of when she was “supposed” to.
This post is by no means a post just for me to brag about my daughter. While I DO think my daughter is special, I clearly understand that every child hits milestones at a different rate and it usually has no predictive value about how “successful” they will be later in life.
Rather, this post is somewhat of a continuation from Kristen’s latest post entitled “Be a Goddamn Cheetah” where she talked about the many ways that the world sent her “taming” messages as a little girl. After writing that post, Kristen asked me if I had a recent example of trying to be tamed. While I had many, I explained to her that these days I was more cognizant of not trying to tame my own daughter and provided the following example:
As already mentioned, Adeline loves to MOVE. For Christmas this year we got the kids a joint gift – a popular item these days called The Nugget. It is basically a couch for kids that can be taken apart and utilized for whatever their imaginations desire with popular creations being a fort and a slide. LJ loves taking the top part off of The Nugget setting it up on our real couch on an angle so that he can then slide all the way from the top of our real couch to the living room floor. He could play this for hours….and so could Adeline.
The issue is that Adeline is so tiny that she starts at the top and flips all the way to the bottom. One time she went so fast that Larry and I thought she almost broke her neck. We started not allowing them to make a slide unless they were under close supervision. LJ couldn’t understand why so we tried to simplify it and started saying “because Adeline gets too crazy.”
The same goes for our king bed. LJ loves to play and roll on our bed while we are getting ready for the day. However, Adeline is still too young to understand where her body is in space and she would flip right off the edge of the bed if we let her on it unsupervised. So again, explaining to LJ why he can’t let Adeline on to the bed with him we simplified it and said “because she gets too crazy.”
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready and LJ got onto our bed to play. I was in the other room getting ready and heard him tell Adeline that she could not get on the bed because “you ARE too crazy.” Though he transformed the words a little bit from us saying “she gets too crazy” to “you are too crazy,” I knew what LJ Was trying to do. I knew that he did not mean any harm by it. He’s actually a rule follower and was just trying to keep her off the bed as we had asked. However, my heart skipped a beat and if I was a cartoon character, one would have seen a light bulb appear above my head. I thought aloud to myself, “I hope to God nobody EVER tells you that again in your life. You are not too crazy, little girl, nor do you get too crazy. You are a vibrant, active little girl who knows no fear, who knows no cage, and who knows no taming. I hope you stay crazy forever.”
Though Larry and I started the “too crazy” thing to keep her safe, which IS our number one job as parents, it kind of morphed into something else when I heard someone else saying it to her. I already knew this, but was reminded again of how our words have meaning and how especially with kids we need to be intentional about the phrases we use them with them.
Adeline, I hope that you are always “too crazy.” Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Amy who was crazy enough to run and qualify for the Boston Marathon. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Jill who is crazy enough almost every summer to go on a road trip across the US driving hours upon hours to spend time with her family and see the beauty of America. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Anne who was crazy enough to pursue her passion as a religion major even though she was told she would make no money doing it. Maybe you will be “crazy” like Dissident Daughter Kristen who was crazy enough to move to California without knowing anyone simply because she felt the mountains were calling her. And maybe you will be crazy like me – crazy enough to write this blog and to care about keeping other women “crazy” and untamed.
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