Frances Friday: Good Mama

For Christmas, Frances received Yet Another Baby Doll Dressed in Pink. This one, named Baby Susie, cries or giggles if you press a button on her tummy (which is too stiff for Frances's wee fingers, and so requires parental assistance). Frances likes the giggle, but prefers the crying.

No, wait. It's sweet.

She prefers the crying because it gives her a chance to express her mammoth-sized nurturing gene.

"Baby Susie's cwying!" says Frances, gingerly picking her up, resting her plastic head against her shoulder and gently patting her back. "Shh shh, it's all wight. It's all wight. Shhh."

Baby Susie stops cwying; "See?" says Frances. "I can be a good mama."

"You sure can," I say. "What a great mummy you are. You take such good care of your toys."

It's a thrill, lately, to watch her competence and confidence increase. She is (as she proudly declares at least half a dozen times per day) a "big senior girl," and she can put on her own coat and her own shoes and her own sweater (as long as Mummy helps with the buttons) and her own pants, and she can brush her own teeth and climb into a chair at the kitchen table, even if once she's there she can't eat because her jaw is at table-height. She can operate the mouse-thingie on Mummy's laptop and open Internet Explorer and play with Elmo and call up Google, egads. (I think this last was an accident, but I'm not taking any chances.) She can turn on the TV using the mewote. She can push her stepstool from the bathroom to the fridge and use it to remove all the magnets on the freezer door.

"What a big girl you are!" we say.

"I'm a big senior girl," says Frances.

Frances frankly enjoys other people taking care of her. None of this striving after independence for our snippet, none of this foolhardy "me do it!" her peers are so fond of. Usually this makes our leaves immeasurably easier, because as every parent knows, letting a young child do something for themselves takes at least ten times longer. Yet it has caused me concern, because of course Frances needs to learn to take care of herself; and I would rather not force it, but how do you encourage someone to want to be independent?

Fortunately, she seems to have taken care of this herself. Is she not perfect?

Last weekend Erik and I were looking over the junior kindergarten registration materials.

"What are you doing, Mummy?" asked Frances.

"We're deciding whether or not you should go to school. Are you ready for school?"

"Yeah!" cried Frances, running for the stairs.

"Frances? Where are you going?"

"To school!" came the distant reply. She was almost at the top already.

"Not today, sweetie. In a few months. Can you come back down please?"

My beautiful bee is more than ready, except for the small matter of potty training, which will have to be dealt with another day.

But in her (comparatively) mad rush to independence, I am glad that she still asks me to carry her up and down the stairs at least a few times a day. She will stop on the third step, turn to me with upraised arms and twinkling fingers and say, "Can I hold you, Mummy?" And what a pleasure it is to settle her on to me the way she holds her Baby Susie, with her head on my shoulder, one hand on her back, and my nose in the nape of her neck. "Sure, baby," I say.

Except now she says, "I'm not a baby. I'm a big senior girl!"

Oh! Right.

Posted by Andrea at January 12, 2007 6:50 AM under Frances Friday

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