Little EC (not so little anymore…) just graduated from size 2 to size 3 diapers. I have one of each size that she’s worn, and the size N just seems impossibly tiny.

She also wolfed down almost half a pear today. Turns out she’ll eat almost anything if it is mixed with enough of mother’s milk. I had been giving her bananas recently, but she had become “irregular”…maybe as a result, maybe coincidentally…and I stopped for a couple weeks to give her gut a chance to settle down. After eating the pears, she chewed expectantly on the spoon that I gave her to play with, clearly disappointed that nothing more was coming out of it.

In other news, she can spin now. I leave her on her tummy, surrounded by toys, and soon I’ll find her 180 degrees different, grabbing the toy she likes best.

The most interesting thing that she does recently is using mirrors as tools. We have mirrors all over the cabinets in the bedrooms, and the other day I had her on the floor, stomach down, and I was talking to her and walking about. She would push up and follow me with her gaze as I moved to her right. She’s fine turning to the right. But when I’d get too far to the left, she’d turn all the way back to the right, where the mirrors are, and find me in the mirror…and then follow me around there, until I got back to a place where she felt comfortable following me in person. It’s always entertaining to see her play with herself in a mirror, but it’s downright fascinating to see her consciously make use of the mirror as a way of being lazy. There aren’t too many tools that she can make use of with only gross motor skills to work with…most require some amount of manual dexterity. But she’s got this one down.

Little EC thinks that rolling back-to-front is fun.

She also thinks that, when she gets onto her tummy, she should play airplane, her hands and feet off the ground. This is fun for awhile, until she gets tired of it. Then she gets cranky.

She also can’t roll back over onto her back.

Most of the time, this isn’t a big deal. We move on and play something else. Except…at bedtime.

Since (it’s fair to say) I’ve been a rational actor for a couple decades, it’s hard for me to remember that she is not. She thinks rolling is fun. So she does it. Without thinking of what comes next…which is discomfort, then fussiness, and if left untreated, screaming, wailing misery.

So this has been our new pattern at bedtime the last few nights. I put her down on her back. Somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 minutes later, she rolls over onto her stomach, and has fun for awhile, being an airplane and beating the birds down to Acapulco Bay. Then comes What Comes Next…and I come to intervene and roll her back over, with a well-intentioned and completely not-understood admonishment to not roll over anymore if she doesn’t like it on her tummy. We could play this game for hours. And we did.

I tried putting impediments in her way to keep her from rolling. I tried sitting in sight of her and letting her know it was all going to be ok. I tried replacing the pacifier each time it was dropped. In short, everything I could think of, I tried. Except, of course, the thing that I probably needed to do all along, and that I didn’t really want to do.

So tonight, I just left her. Closed the door, went downstairs, and glued myself to the night-vision baby monitor that broadcast to me every desperate flail and the pantomime version of every howl. I ate some dessert, helped clean the kitchen, read a couple articles about baby sleep-training, and otherwise distracted myself for an excruciating 15 minutes. And when that was done, I rushed back up to the room, rolled her over onto her back, picked her up to my shoulder and gave her a good 5-minute comforting. After that, she had left off her pained crying and was just sniffling a bit, still wide awake. I put her back down, gave her pacifier back, covered her in her favorite fuzzy blanket, and softly admonished her to stay as she was.

Three minutes later, she was back on her tummy. Empirical Mom and I prayed through the screaming, and suddenly—quiet. I broke off the prayer to check on her. Too quiet too quick. But a visit to the room just let me hear the waning sniffles of a baby drifting to sleep…on her tummy.

I always thought I’d be thick-skinned about things like this. It turns out I’m a softie, and I will do every soft and gentle thing I can think of. But when all other options seem to have failed…then I get hard. And that is tough.

See, for me the process of waiting out the screaming wasn’t actually that bad. I mean, it was bad. I thought it was terrible. But then, I visited her after she had fallen asleep, and those little sniffles that she has, in her sleep, reminding me of how I had abandoned her in her moment of need when she thought she could count on me…those little sniffles are a thousand times worse than the screaming. I’ll put up with screaming day in and out if I have to…but sniffles!

There are a million child psychologists out there on the internet that say I just broke my daughter’s trust and gave her feelings of abandonment that will follow her through life. Perhaps. But I don’t remember being four months old. She probably won’t either. And come morning, I’ll bet she’ll be ready to smile and play her way through the day, just like she did before all this trauma.

Which just leaves us waiting for…tomorrow night. This had better be over quickly.

What makes something scary? And why do we all find different things scary? I’d be fascinated to know what exactly is going on in a little mind when it decides that something is worth being scared of, instead of just brushing it off.

I make loud noises around EC from time to time, accidentally dropping the washing machine lid or a toilet seat, and she’s always startled but otherwise takes it in stride. She took international airplane trips without breaking a sweat. But last week, after I strapped her carseat onto the grocery cart and pushed her across the parking lot, we encountered the scariest thing in the world, so far:

The Air Door.

Yes, I had to look up what this thing is called. You know when you walk through the automatic sliding doors of a grocery store, warehouse, or something like that, there is a fan mounted above the door that blows down on you? It keeps the air conditioning in and bugs out while the physical doors are open. It also shakes the covering of any unsuspecting carseat that happens to walk through it. And that, my friends, is some scary business.

It only took her a moment to burst out screaming. I stood inside with her, trying to console her while leaving her in the carseat, but she cried uncontrollably, in a world-is-ending wail that pierced all ears walking by. Before long I took her out of the carseat and held her, and then she slowly calmed down. Her little sniffles persisted for the hour or so I was in the store, and I carried her in my arms at least three-quarters of that time. (One-armed grocery shopping: achievement unlocked.) I put her back in the carseat, she fell asleep, exhausted from the fear, and slept until a careless checker woke her up while I paid. And then…the moment we all feared…we left the store. Through the Air Door.

In the bright sunlight outside, I couldn’t just stand and hold her for as long as I had inside the store. So I got her calm enough, put her into the car, and off we went. In the five minute drive home, her PTSD kicked in and she relived every harrowing detail of the experience.

We haven’t been through the Air Door since; in fact, not even gone in the car anywhere since. But I do put her into the carseat and take walks in the stroller regularly. And she is skittish in the carseat now. Our housing complex has speed bumps all over (and terrible sidewalks) so the stroller goes up and down as I go over them. The first day we walked after the Air Door, she freaked out at the feeling of the speed bump. Though she doesn’t do that anymore, she still has this I’m-going-to-cry-if-you-push-me-too-far look whenever she’s in the stroller. She doesn’t fall asleep like she used to.

I can only guess at what she found so scary about the Air Door. But it was such a strong association that it has left lasting effects. If I could predict ahead of time what she would find scary, I could avoid or ameliorate; but I can’t. And I’m kind of dreading the next time I have to take her to the store with me. Because then She Will Have To Face Her Greatest Fear.

It’s been a busy two weeks for little EC. Today, she rolled over for the first time unaided. She’s been rolling over for a couple weeks now with some assist, either from me or from gravity; but today, she did it all on her own. And then again. And again. It would seem that once she does something once, she wants to keep it up until she has it down. Laying down for naps has been difficult, because she wants to roll over…and then she can’t get back to her back for the sleeping part.

She also really began reaching for things. Just before we traveled, EGm (that’s Empirical Grandma) tied a bunch of ribbons to the handle of the carseat, so that EC would have something to look at. She now not only looks at them, but reliably reaches out to grab them (and they’re becoming so worn it’s about time to replace them with something else…) She will spot one that she likes; reach and grab; hold for a second; release; and then do it again. And again. And again.

Most fun, she is doing the same with her bottles. She no longer is content to have the bottle given to her; she must reach for it and bring it in (even if she doesn’t realize that she’s not doing much except signaling to me…). Then she can sometimes support it with her own hands by herself for a little bit. But now she wants to practice…so she brings it in; sucks a few times; pushes it away; and then repeats. Again. And again. Feeding her takes twice as long as it used to. But it’s now twice as fun for everyone!

Oh, and she does the same thing with my face. Grab nose. Swipe down to chin, pausing at mouth. Repeat.

Repetition is the hallmark of learning. It’s said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill to world-class level. Given how much little EC sleeps, she is probably practicing all these gross motor skills something like 10 hours a day. If she kept that pace up, it would be 2 years, 8 months to the time that she has truly mastered them. Which sounds about right. Most three-year-olds that I know have got the basic motor skills of life down pretty well. As she gets older and sleeps less, she’ll practice for more time each day, but she’ll have more things to practice—fine motor skills, intellectual skills—so it’s pretty clear she’ll be kept busy.