Playing Politics

As our toddler grows, her world turns and and new paths are forged.  Lila tests boundaries daily and challenges her comfort zone, and in turn we do our best to stand back and allow her space to roam.  With our little girl sailing into 21 months we have settled into a trusted routine of work and school.  And while there have been little bumps along the road we are fortunate that Lila is thriving and growing under the watchful eye of her teachers and the camaraderie of her classmates.

Maybe it is because Lila has learned to "play nice in the sandbox," that we feel so comfortable putting her in diverse social situations.  So we go to the neighborhood playground, holiday and birthday parties and "mix-it-up" whenever possible. It was during one of these outings a few weeks ago that our game changed.  Greg was working late so I took Lila to our regular playground, she was climbing up the slide and taking turns with another younger boy who, just learning to walk, was being led by his mother.  Lila and the boy shared the fun and soon he leaned in to hug her which seemed quite sweet until I heard my little girl shriek.  This little boy had Lila's entire cheek in his mouth and was biting down- it happened in a split second all while I was within arm's reach.  English was not the first language of the boy's mother so suddenly I found myself thrust into the rawest of maternal reactions, further compounded by another mother's struggle to express her sincerest apology.  Lila's skin wasn't broken so I knew the best thing was to get her home and get ice on her blazing cheek. 

Lila's cheek turned black and blue and the bite marks were prominent the next morning but but they faded after a few days.  So damage done, we move on and a lessons are learned. I could have gotten angry in that moment but my immediate reaction was tempered by the realization that the other mother was also in pain. While she struggled to find the words, we didn't need to speak the same language for me to understand what was written so clearly on her face, the heart of that little boy's mother ached for my little girl and that was enough. We all learned lessons that day, Lila still points to her cheek and says, "baby not nice," I have learned that as a mother, accidents will happen right in front of us, and as parents we need to do our best to prevent them, protect our children and all play nice.

Lila's words/phrases:  "not nice", "I don't know," "what's this?, " A,B,C's, (said while slapping her hands on her legs) car, show, shoes, milk, pants, "muumus" (muffins), socks, "ack" (Jack), outside, milk, eggs, eat, book, night-night, wet, mess, ball, keys, mine!

What's New:  we enrolled Lila in the Little Gym in February- so every Saturday am at 8:45am we start our day with running, jumping and tumbling- fun for the whole family.  Lila is also quite the dancer- she likes to shake it and the girl's got rhythm- we have regular dance-offs. Lila also has developed a repertoire of walks, gallops and skips and she can also run very fast- especially when running from mom and dad.  When coming to and from the car, Lila insists upon carrying the keys and had grown quite proficient in operating the automatic lock on the key chain.



the bite