Sold For A Smile

They say parenthood changes everything, but that's not entirely true - it only changes those things directly associated with the new baby. Deep, no? For example, much like Richard Pryor posited that snakes cause people to run into trees, little babies cause people to open their eyes wider, paint on a huge smile, and talk slower, at higher registers and in simple sentences repeated three or four times over (e.g.) "Hi! Hiiiii! Hi there! Hiiiiiii!". If Lydia's first word isn't a slow and gleeful "Hi!", well then it's certainly not for her parents' lack of trying, or for that matter, the efforts of her grandparents and aunts and random strangers in the mall...

Babies apparently don't respond to subtlety.

Other obvious implications of parenthood - adjusted sleep schedule, a newfound obsession with the volume and colour of baby feces, difficulty in talking about anything other than parenthood, etc. - have been mined to death by television sitcoms and stand-up comedians for decades. Non-parents roll their eyes, but like other cliches, they are true - all of them. And you, as a parent, have become something of a cliche too, responding frantically to the cliche needs and actions of your baby. You are stripped of your sense of shame the first time your child spits up on your work outfit 30 seconds before your carpool arrives. Or when she has her first tantrum at the mall. Or when you dry heave at the load of barley oatmeal and digested carrot in her diaper.

Above not meant to sound negative. Digressing...

At six months, Miss Lydia weighs 15.7 pounds and miraculously is in the 93rd percentile for her height despite having parents who are short even by the standards of coffee-drinking pre-schoolers. She still only has two teeth, but they are as sharp as cat claws and I often find them buried in my thumb or chin when I'm not really paying attention - she's done with milk and is on to blood apparently. Count Lydia.

That's about it.