As I stood at the kitchen sink plucking a thousand hitchhikers off Lola’s jacket I started reflecting on how far she’s come recently. It all started last week when we returned home from some adventure out on the town and I had the usual pounds of gear to lug back into the house. Rather than make two trips (one for the diaper bag, empty water canteens, and discarded shoes and socks and another trip for Lola) I simply plucked her from her car seat and set her on her sturdy little legs. As though it was the norm, she toddled on after the big kids right into the house. A new era has begun.
It wasn’t until Georgia was born that I started allowing/encouraging/expecting Normy to navigate his own course in and out of the car or up and down stairs. He was my baby, and even though he was a tank and even though I was hugely pregnant I carried him everywhere. He is a complacent type B little guy, and was perfectly content with his life as a sack of potatoes.
Lola is a different little bird. Whips-smart and feisty, snuggly and smiley she certainly exhibits all the duality stereotypical her Gemini status. She’s a climber. I am constantly extracting her from the dining room table, the end tables, and worst of all: the counters. She is fearless at the playground, tackling even the highest of slides and climbing on anything else she can manage. Last Friday, I saved her from certain-disaster. She fell off the suspension bridge. She slipped under the rail backwards after jumping a bit too vigorously. I saw her fall out of the corner of my eye and twisted around to catch her inches from the ground. I was standing right there, Allah be praised.
Yesterday, Lola enjoyed another chance to test her growing independence. She was able to WALK with us for the first time on a little stroll through what we call The Back 10 (ten acres of uninhabited/undeveloped land behind our house owned by another family.) She was doggedly determined to go the whole way on her own two feet. And even though the weeds came up past her head, even though she stumbled every other step, even though the big kids often left her in the dust to toil along with just her mother for company she would not give it up. If I picked her up she would protest with the most violent kicking and whining. Put me down! I’ll do it myself, Mama!
By the time we made it back to the house her hands and knees were muddy, her jacket hidden by a layer of hitchhikers, and she was completely out of breath. But, she was victorious. A pint sized hero of the trail. Go Lola go! Those determined little legs will take you over many mountains in your life if you remain as persistent as you are now.
