You may recall many, many months ago when the sweetest baby was sporting a feminine version of daddy's hairstyle. It was her first foray into things faux and we-the-parents have not seen the likes of such ee-mee-tah-see-on, if you will, since. From the moment the rest of her hair grew in, our forthright girl has been nothing but the 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' kind of baby - making it fairly easy for us to gauge her behavior and our responses to it.
The first hint of a reemergence of the faux came during a recent dinner at one of the girl's early haunts. The independent, self-feeding baby-grown-up started choking on her (V-8 Fusion cleverly disguised by mama as) juice. Mama reacted with the expected lightning-speed pats on the back, which seemed to help the tiniest girl recover.
After breathing a sigh of relief, mama was beginning to return to her own dinner plate when her efforts were arrested by the 'ack, ack, ack' sounds coming from baby-adorable. Quickly dropping her fork, mama moved in close to her tiny baby and started patting her on the back again. After a mere moment, the 'ack, ack' sound was replaced by a low 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh', interrupted with the staccato thuds from mama's pats. Mama stopped her patting, and looked at the girl, who was nothing but serious as she began to 'cough' again.
"Ack, ack, ack", said the baby, and looked expectantly at mama with her big, brown eyes. "Ack, ack" she said again insistently, waiting for the next pat. Of course, you can imagine how we-the-parents responded to what must now be the cutest-thing-ever. We could barely keep our laughter at a socially acceptable level as our girl studied us with her oh-so-serious eyes and fake coughs.
In the end, honesty won out, and baby-truthful dissolved into laughter with mama and daddy, we-the-family happy and completely amused with one another and the first, innocent deception of our growing girl.
And, to brighten your day with an example of the kind of sincerity we're talking about, here's a picture of those eyes. Go ahead. "Uh-door-uh-bul".
Baby-breck was born with a head full of soft, dark hair. So much hair, in fact, that babymama & daddy could actually style it as soon as we could pry the pink & blue knit cap off her little head. (The nurses, who both mama and daddy loved, chastened us repeatedly for not keeping her head warm enough. It seemed at times that they were going to rubber cement that thing on so we couldn't remove it after we left the hospital).
Baby-fuzzie looked, need I say it, adorable with that head of hair, and babymama secretly smiled each time she saw one of those poor bald babies running around in public.
In later days, however, babymama & daddy noticed a certain lack of hair in random patches around baby-balding's little head. It started falling out in little bits at the back, leaving a soft, dark duck tail at the nape of her neck. Then, the fall-out spread to the sides, and before long, baby-punk-rock debuted, you know it, the mohawk.
As parents who fell in love to what some might term a Celtic-Punk soundtrack, babydaddy & mama are ever so proud of baby-independent's early display of individualism, and know that it will lead to a lifetime of bravery, liberty, anarchy and hopefully, revolution.
PS: Baby-safest is only sitting in a car eating lunch. She is not riding around sans carseat.
