When She Doesn’t Know I’m There

I love watching Leah when she doesn’t know I’m there.

When she sees me watching her, she sometimes tries to put on a show, or is too preoccupied by my presence to play and be herself. When she doesn’t know I can see her, though, she’s just her. She’s just Leah, completely natural and uninhibited.

She loves to play with her toes. Sometimes she lifts her legs high up over her head and watches her feet hovering above her, and sometimes she draws her toes up to her mouth and sucks on them. If she has shoes on, they are mesmerizing to her; if the shoes have laces, it is only a matter of time before those laces make their way into her mouth, too.

She loves to talk to herself and to her toys and to her feet…… She just loves to talk, babbling on saying, “Oooohhhhh,” and “Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh,” and “Dapadapdapadapapadada,” and “nananananana.” Sometimes she says "Mamamamamamamamama," too, but I'm not completely convinced she knows what she's saying.

She adores tags. Tags on her blankets, tags on her toys, tags on her clothes…tags of any kind. She loves them. If I hear a simple, “Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh,” repeated over and over, I can bet she has a tag in her mouth. I’m so thankful that I didn’t cut the tags off everything she owns before she got to this stage.

She loves to cruise around the family room. She’ll start at the big bumper pillow I have in front of the entertainment center and cruise along the length of that. When she reaches the end, she grabs onto her PackNPlay railing and cruises from there. From there she’ll often go to the bookshelf nearby. If she falls at any point along this journey, she makes a little frustrated noise and crawls back to the beginning. It’s like she’s testing herself.

Sometimes she gets completely focused and distracted by the tiniest things. There is a tiny piece of clear thread that is sticking out of the side of our area rug, and she always finds that little piece of fishing line and fiddles with it. She can spot a fuzz ball from 100 yards away. When we go outside, she spots the one bug on the sidewalk and makes a beeline. A tiny splatter of baby food on her high chair tray is enough to distract her from eating any more. To say she has a great “attention to detail” would be an understatement.

She often points to things…but looks at her finger as it points, rather than at the thing she’s pointing at.

She really seems to love music. Music on commercials on TV are mesmerizing to her, calling her attention from whatever she’s doing until it’s over. Sometimes she even does a little dance, bouncing on her knees and shaking her little bottom. Usually, she’ll clap, too.

I just love watching her. Every day she learns something new, and every day she becomes more and more of a little person. Her personality is so evident, and I can’t wait to see more and more of it emerge. At the same time, though, I can wait. I can wait and wait.