Beautiful Girl

One year ago tonight you needed a mama.

And one year ago tonight I needed a baby...

Best Friends

If a blog post were to have a thesis sentence this one would be:

Ariam has two best friends and neither of them is me.

Her best friend and idol is J.

There is much irony in this. Throughout the years we wasted arguing over whether or not to have children, one of the central themes of J's arguement was that he believed the child and I would bond and leave him out of our special circle.

Now guess who has a special circle?

I'm not sure how to feel about this. We spend 2-3 weekdays together (and weekends) which means that she's with me far more than him. Yet she asks about "daddy??" no less than once every five minutes. She points at where his jacket should be. She begs to talk to him on the phone. When I reach for her after her naptime she asks "daddy??" with hopeful expectancy. When he gets home the mutual joy is adorable. And...irksome.

Yeah. I'm a little jealous. Yesterday Ariam had a fever. I picked her up early from daycare, brought her home to cuddle with some apple juice on the couch, was the receptacle for her vomit-fest, and babied her for hours. Daddy was the only one she wanted all evening. She actually had a melting screaming tantrum when he handed her to me.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I thought our bond was supposed to grow? Theirs has by leaps and bounds. Sometimes when J and I discuss this Ariam reaches out for me (from the safety of his arms) to pat me on the shoulder and give me a "man, that's tough kiddo" look.

Her other best friend?

The white baby doll. She received two wonderful brown babies for Christmas. When the white baby with the hard plastic legs arrived the other dolls were promptly rejected. New white baby has to be with her at all times. Last night Ariam was sleeping with us with hard plastic baby in her arms. I'm pretty sure plastic baby poked her in the eye with a rock hard plastic finger. Ariam woke up screaming and promptly rolled over and smacked me in anger. Apparently white plastic baby's unruly behavior in bed is my fault.

Sigh.

I know that all kids go through stages. I don't really think that she is unattached to me. I just think she is in month 8 of her preference for J and there is no end in sight...
~A