The Mind of a Child

The mind of a child has to be a truly alien thing.

Take for instance my older son. His younger brother has recently started eating infant cereal. We've given it to him a couple times, sometimes he can't seem to get enough of it (like when my husband feeds him) and other time he wants nothing to do with it (like when I feed him ). So when we got home from our walk today, I set the youngest on the floor so i could take care of some stuff in another room. While I was out, I heard my oldest giggling, so I thought nothing of it.

When I got back, there were cereal flakes everywhere. It was like it had snowed in that one section of the living room. The floor had enough flakes for our son to draw in. The blanket the baby was laying on was covered in flakes. So was the baby. And after picking up the baby, I was covered in cereal flakes too.

The oldest had this big smile on his face, showed me the box of cereal, and might've even said, "Baby more," which is his way of saying the baby's hungry and wants to eat. He just didn't understand why mommy got so upset when he was trying to be helpful.

While in college, my husband studied psychology and one of the things they talked about was how up until a certain age, the right hemisphere and left hemisphere of the brain don't communicate with each other. And I was like, well, what does that mean? The best he could describe it was that children will do stuff without knowing why.

Like if our oldest son had better communication skills, I could ask him why he poured cereal all over the floor. He'd probably tell me, I don't know. And he truly wouldn't know.

Since my husband told me about this, I wondered what it would be like to live this way. Sure, there are those rare adults that either by some genetic defect or brain damage, the right and left hemispheres of their brains don't communicate with each other.

But what would it be like if a whole society maintained this disconnect into maturity? How would their society be different than ours? And, more importantly, how would it be similar?

It's one of the reasons I like writing speculative fiction. You can take something from the real world like this, and see how a fictional society would change with it.

What Baby Wants

So I think I've encountered the first of many times where what I would pick out for my son is not what he would pick out for himself. Shocking, I know. But it is.

For Christmas, my sister took me on a shopping spree to get whatever baby stuff I wanted. And one of the things on my list was this toy that the kid could push it as they practiced walking behind it, or you could put the seat down and the kid could ride it. Only I wanted the one that had a big lion head on the front where you could push the lion's nose and it would talk to you. But there was another on at the store for half the cost, didn't talk, didn't have a cute lion's face staring at you, and had a whole bunch of things the kid could spin to see different colors or make noise.

When it comes to two items that I'm kind of torn between which one I want to get, I'll show them to my son and have him pick them out. Yeah, I realize he's not even a year old, he's only eight-and-a-half months right now, but I've been letting him choose things for quite a while now.

And really, I wanted the lion walker/rider, but my sister was like, well, this other one's half the cost, so you could buy more stuff. So we set the two boxes on the floor at the store and let the little guy choose which one he wanted.

Of course, he went for the cheaper one.

So we got that one, got some other stuff for him (the usual diapers, wipes, sippy cups, flatware, plates, and toys), and we were good to go.

It was only after I got home, had my husband put together his new walker/rider, go to sleep, only to be woken up by a hungry baby that I started thinking, you know, maybe I should have gotten the lion instead. That was the one thing I wanted to get, but didn't.

Then, this morning, the little guy was playing with his new toys and seemed to really like the walker/rider he picked out. So even though I liked the lion one better, he seems pretty happy with the one he picked out.

I Love My Baby

Sure, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I love my baby, but it's not as simple as you might think.

When I first saw my baby (and I'm not talking about the alien-in-the-ultrasound baby), I had no idea what to think of him. Sure, I had spent the months prior to his birth wondering what it would be like to be a mom, what it would be like to finally hold him and have him in my arms. And I didn't believe the teachers at the baby care classes I went to about the whole bonding thing and that the first moments after birth were important to both mom and baby. I thought, what would be so hard about liking him?

Well, was I in for a shock.

The first time I held my baby was after three and a half hours of labor and delivery, and nearly twenty-four hours practically strapped to a bed (sure, I wasn't strapped down, but they wouldn't let me get up). So I looked at my baby and after thinking, you know, he really does look like the little alien from his ultrasound photos, he was just that to me: an alien.

And truthfully, I wanted nothing to do with him.

I had no idea what to do. Luckily, the nurses knew what I had to do, and soon it was time to feed him. Then everybody left, and it was just the three of us (me, baby, and daddy). The last thing I thought before falling asleep was the first thing I thought when I woke up: I have a baby (with a sense of dread) and I am way too young for this.

Now, almost five months later, I can look at my baby, look at the way he's sleeping so peacefully, and still think I have a baby. But instead of that same sense of dread as I first had, I have more of this calming, relaxing, sense of peace.

Sure, there are time when I still think I am way too young for this (being a mom), but I'm starting to get used to it. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it, but there's no going back. There's no changing what has happened. It's simultaneously the scariest and more awe inspiring thing that has ever happened to me. I worry about the future, and what kind of boy, and eventually what kind of man he'll be and know that that will be a direct result of how I raise him (and sure my husband will be helping too, but I'm the one staying home with him day after day). But then I think of all the work I had to go through to get to this point, all the nights of hardly any sleep, all the difficulties feeding him, all the thoughts of having absolutely no idea what to do with him, and yet, I think, if I can make it through all that, what can't I make it through? Some days, that thought is barely enough to keep me going. Especially when I think that there couldn't possibly be any end to whatever's happening.

But then, the baby falls asleep. And it's like the world is so peaceful, time slows down, and it seems like this should never end.

And those are the moments that make it all worth it.

When you can look at his sleeping face and know that after all the fussing and all the crying and all the not knowing how to help him and all the feeling helpless and not knowing what to do that you know that there will eventually be a moment where it's all over, where he's sleeping, and there's just this sense of rightness with the world.

It's those moments that allow me to realize that everything I do for him, all the stress I put myself through, is just because I love him.

It's those moments that I look forward to. When I look at my baby, think I made that, and smile. Where sometimes I want nothing more than to just let his sleep peacefully on my lap because there's nothing else I have to do with him.