I Don't Know How To Blog... or...

I think I may be going through some sort of identity crisis.

While this has nothing to do with my ability to be a successful blogger, it does mean that I haven't a clue how to begin.

I'm very blessed in life, I know that. I have a gorgeous 19 month old daughter who makes me laugh, cry, smile, dance, sing, want to be a better person. I have been lucky enough to have spent over 13 years with a man who knows me better than I know myself.
I have a wonderful mother and brother. But they are over 600 miles away. Here, in Oklahoma, aside from the family that I share a roof with, I am very much alone. That is more a situation of my own making than anything else.

See, I don't know how to make friends. And apparently, I'm incapable of keeping them. This is nothing new. I've been a mess of social awkwardness and anxiety since birth. Growing up, I rarely interacted with anyone outside my family until I began school. And once I got there, I didn't know what to do. I went through years of bullying for my petite size, my family, my clothes, you name it. I was an easy target, too. I didn't know how to laugh things off, or just ignore them. I have always defended myself as though to the death because no one else was going to do it for me. I don't know if that's the product of poor home life or if numerous other experiences caused it. But it's still my mechanism: defend, defend, defend.

As so many in my life have put it, I don't know how to "play the game". And that is exactly right. As much as I don't want to admit it because I shun all things fake, so much of life is a game. A game of lies, a game of pandering, a game of misdirection. I don't play it because I don't want to. I believe in honesty. Unfortunately, so few others are with me on that. They play the game I was never taught to play. And I don't play.

See what I meant about not know how to blog?

What I want now:
--A new job with better pay
-- My daughter to be a less picky eater
-- Understanding from so many
-- To become the woman that's released whenever I apply my Darling Clandestine perfume oil. I want to always be her.
-- To be the kind of person who is missed, not the kind who is forgotten. Maybe I should have worn the perfume oil listed above long ago
-- To find happiness in simpler things. Happiness is not guaranteed. We have to make our own way. I know this. I just have to find a way to apply that knowledge.

Radioactive spiders, crawling and military ambitions

My ten month old daughter decided this Monday that it was finally time for her to begin crawling. She has been implementing a very lazy form of what is called the ‘commando crawl’ for about a month and a half now but it rarely took her very far, often just in circles around the playmat. I say ‘lazy form’ because the commando crawl usually involves the baby using both arms to propel themselves forward while they drag their tummies and sometimes their legs along behind them. Ash’s version involved mainly using her left arm to reach for something just outside her immediate vicinity and the rest of her just kind of came along after that arm. Her right side almost never went into motion, leading me to have a brief meltdown where I was convinced that there was something wrong with her neurologically. Once the pediatrician talked me down and told me that my baby was most likely just going to skip crawling in favor or pulling up and walking, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. *Phew!*

Ash still prefers the commando crawl, which always makes me think, “CHARLIE! UP IN THE TREES! TAKE COVER!” , but she has demonstrated that she CAN actually push up onto her hands and knees and shakily move forward before collapsing back onto her belly because it’s obviously easier for her.

But now that she has figured out that she CAN crawl normally, her speed has kicked in. Whereas before she would only scoot around the playmat and/or wiggle around the living room floor, now she is clearing full rooms with a hardcore sense of determination. She knows I don’t want her going into the kitchen. So where does she try to go? Into the kitchen every chance she gets. She pauses, turns her head over her shoulder and shoots me this sneaky grin and you can almost here a whistle blow before she takes off.

And she’s off!

And she wants to be chased and captured, taken back to the playmat or her room just so she can start the process all over again.

One thing I can say about all this, crawling has made her very happy. For the last few weeks, this child has thrown more temper tantrums than I would have thought possible. Before she hit 9 months old, she was often very content to sit and play with her toys or observe her surroundings and it was never a problem. But once she hit that 9 month mark, it was like something clicked in her brain that said, “Nope, this isn’t cutting it. I should be doing something. I should be doing something!” The only thing that contented her at times was lifting her up and letting her plant her feet and bounce while you held her. She was very proud of herself whenever she was standing (supported, of course) but even that got old.

She began crawling in her sleep. We would go into her room to check on her and find that she was either all the way pushed up and devastated because she clearly didn’t know what to do next or find that her knees were planted, her butt was pushed up into the air but the rest of her was flat and snoozing away. If we tried to help her lay flat, she would wake up immediately and become furious. We didn’t realize that she was in the process of figuring something out—she just didn’t know how to make use of that knowledge.

But now she is on the move and crawl is just about all she wants to do. That and bang doors into walls which she finds most amusing. But she’s happier so that makes me happy. Even if it means that every five minutes or so I am rushing to pull her out of the kitchen, bathroom, away from the computer, the Xbox (the green light is like a magnet to her), the cat (who has begun praying for his life this week), etc.

It has become clear that this kid is going to do everything at her own pace and she cannot be swayed by anything other than her own will.

I remember 5 months ago when my friend’s baby (same age as Ash) began crawling and I looked at my baby and wondered if there was something I needed to be worried about. I’ll be the first to say that I think my kid is brilliant—when she looks at something, she studies it with an intensity that suggests she isn’t just looking at it, she’s figuring out how it works. I’m sorry, that’s just freaking smart in my eyes. And she’s been that way since she was about 3 months old. She studies people, landmarks, objects and she understands the way things work. She’ll take the Xbox controller into her tiny hands, push a few buttons and then look up at the television to see if anything has changed. She gets it.

So when my friend’s baby began hitting all these physical milestones so early, I kind of went, ‘hmm.’ Was I doing something wrong? Not working with Ash enough? Not helping her developmentally?

After a while, I remembered that my friend is a chemist. And I decided that most likely, she had injected her baby with some sort of super spider venom that was gradually turning her into Spider-baby. And then I began to feel better. Because, let’s face it: You can yell, “MUSH!” at your baby all you want but she ain’t gonna propel herself forward unless she’s damn good and ready.