2.23.04

before i had emily i had a dog. [i also had lots of sleep, a uninterrupted sex life, and boobs that were once described as "perky", but that's another story.] when they saw me with this dog, many people predicted that my next pet would be a child. at the time, i thought these people were crazy. less than a year later i was married and pregnant. who knew?

when they found out i was pregnant, a few people wondered if perhaps i wasn't making a mistake. after all, look what happened to my dog. what will i do when i can't handle the responsibilities of the baby and i find that she's not as easy to give away as the dog was? if these people had made their comments to my face i would have argued that the dog had been crazy and surely my baby will be more like me and less like crazy. because unless i'm pregnant i'm not crazy. right? i explained this to the friends who told me what the friends-of-friends said, and we agreed that babies are nothing like dogs therefore i had no worries.

here we are almost 8 months later and i can say with confidence that emily is a keeper. but those friends-of-friends had been partially right. in many ways, emily is like a dog. she's also like a cat, a horse, and a parakeet.

very early on we saw the similarities between emily and those animals of the feline persuasion. the first thing we noticed was her affinity for spitting up. in cat talk, this is referred to as yacking. babies actually are worse than cats because they don't give warning heaves. one minute you're wearing a clean shirt holding a cute smiley baby and the next minute you're wearing a goopy shirt. baby is still smiling and -- if you're attracted to people with up-chucked milk hanging off their lip -- still cute.

like most cats, emily gets a big kick out of small objects dangled in front of her nose, and her newest cat-like trick is her tendency to prefer a clean place to poop over a dirty place. if you have a cat [and a cat box], you know this phenomenon. apparently, cats can hold it for longer than a kid at summer camp. the minute you change a cat's litter box they come bounding over to make a stinky deposit. this past weekend, emily didn't even wait until i had lifted her off the changing table when she gave her look that says "don't bother me, i'm busy" and left me a present in her newly-changed nappy. when your cat does this you can grimace but you don't have to immediately go about the business of again changing her litter box. with a kid, you are forced to once again put baby on table, undress, remove offending contraption, try to keep now-bored baby from throwing herself off table, wipe, re-diaper, re-dress. sigh.

emily's animal-like qualities are also apparent when she inflates her girth while being strapped in the carseat. she does this to make my job more difficult. have you ever put a saddle on a horse? this is exactly what they do to avoid the saddle being cinched tight. both horses and babies are very smart.

now that emily has started putting everything from shoes to magazines in her mouth, she reminds me daily how similar she is to my crazy canine friend. when i started feeding emily solids i was so proud of myself because she refused no item of food. she ate everything i put in front of her. thank god! i thought, here's a kid who will never give me grief at the dinner table. then i saw her eat a dirty kleenex that she had pulled from the bathroom garbage just moments before, and i realized that my pat on the back was a tad premature. sure, she's no picky eater while she's learning to eat, but what about when she starts learning to taste?

and even though i've always hated birds [that live inside, in cages], i have to admit that there's nothing more adorable to me than the sight of emily parked in her baby cage happily chirping to herself in the mirror. she sits there and amuses herself for minutes, which in baby time is equivalent to hours.

to those of you who are contemplating getting a pet to prepare you for a child, skip it. go straight to the kid. they're similar in many ways to most pets [and some barnyard animals], and unlike pets, eventually they will be potty-trained.

xoxo
mary [mary @ marytsao.com]




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