Spitfire Girl

*A creative writing piece*

Her name was Avery and I knew she was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her. Her black hair stood out from her head in that trendy “I just rolled out of bed” kind of look. It was about two inches long, so I’m not sure the hair could do anything else. Her face was in a perpetual grimace, I knew if I pushed her, she’d push back. Her eyes were bright blue but sat squinting in her puckered little face.
I tried being nice and smiled at her. Nothing. I tried talking. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I said softly.
Naturally, her response was to ball her hands into fists as her face got beet red. Then she let out this cheerleader – about – to – be – stabbed – in – a- slasher – film scream.

I did what any woman in my position would do and shoved the pacifier in her mouth and called to have her taken away to the nursery.

This was not the kind of baby the parenting magazines were selling. Where was my docile infant who lay cooing in my arms? I thought for a second about my own relationship with my mother and knew why fate had blessed me with this spitfire girl.

I decided to take a small nap to prepare for our next meeting. The nurse brought her in an hour later and announced that my little Avery had just eaten and should be quiet and content for some time. I picked her up ever so carefully and cuddled her close to my chest. She proceeded to projectile vomit on my chest, neck and hair. I proceeded to cry.

When we were sent home I discovered she had colic. Colic is Latin for a baby who never stops screaming unless it’s in a car seat that is on top of the washer while it’s on the spin cycle. Pediatricians have a theory that colic is caused by gas that the baby can’t expel. I don’t know how true that is, but I am positive that a fart was not going to fix this child.

For three months, we cried together, her from colic, me because I’d run out of clothes to spin in the washer.

When she was four months old, she just stopped screaming. She had a loopy toothless smile and blew spit bubbles. Her toes were her best friends and apparently enjoyed a good licking. I finally had the cooing baby the brochures told me about. I could sleep at night and let the wash pile up.

This short period was the apparently the calm before the storm. Next came teething. Teething sounds simple enough; a baby just grows some teeth, but let me tell you, it is not! I’m fairly certain that when the teeth grow, they are lined with acid and are proceeded out by a branding iron. Avery did nothing but scream, while I ran around dipping pacifiers in Orajel trying to relieve the misery. Orajel only lasts about 5 minutes though, and then the wailing would continue. I finally resorted to letting her gnaw on rawhide, purchased solely for her, and this did the trick.

When she was around 7 months old, she became mobile. Crawling seriously ups the ante on the damage a child can do. I never paid attention to the things that were at knee level or lower, and this was a mistake. There are all kinds of things I never noticed, but Avery sure did. Did you know kids like to eat carpet?? She would scoot around from one spot to another and pick all the loose fuzzies from the floor and munch them like a grazing farm animal. And the cat food, oh Avery was a cat food connoisseur. At least once a day I would catch her eating the cat food, and she’d look up at me and smile, orange goo oozing out from her mouth. Then there were things she couldn’t eat, yet could still destroy. To this day I don’t have a single cardboard cover for a VHS tape. Slowly but surely they got ripped to sheds and had to be vacuumed away. And I don’t know how many people got pick-pocketed when they put a purse on my floor.

At 10 months, Avery could stand. I had just finished baby proofing everything from the knees down, and now I had to move up from there. No surface was safe. The coffee tables and end tables had to be devoid of anything, or else she would whip it across the house, usually aiming for me or the cat. Let me tell you, granite coasters leave some nasty bruises on your shins.

Then came walking. Walking is crawling on steroids. And no one tells you that walking only lasts about 2 weeks before kids learn to run. There was no segue from one to the other, so I had no adjustment time. Again, I was unprepared, this time for her getting loose. Only the worst moms can lose a child, but it takes a special kind of mom to lose her daughter in her own house. She went missing for over an hour and I finally found her sleeping peacefully in my closet.

Talking… ah talking. Finally she could tell me “milk” instead of taking my hand and dragging me to the refrigerator and grunting at me. But along with the positive aspects of talking, one needs to address the negative. Avery learned her first swear word, shit, and learned exactly how to use it properly, like when she dropped something. I do have to admit that this amused me greatly, and it was hard to punish her when I couldn’t stop laughing. The biggest problem though, was that she seemed to drop things more often when we had company. My in-laws weren’t nearly as charmed by it as I was.

Potty training and Avery did not mesh well. She got the peeing in the potty thing pretty well, but not pooping. Pooping was reserved for her bed. Every day at nap time Avery would take off her diaper and poop in her bed, and then paint the walls with its contents. I tried duct taping the diapers closed. I tried putting diapers on backwards. I tried putting zip up pajamas on backwards so she couldn’t unzip them and get to the diaper. But my little Houdini could escape them all. The poop art lasted for two months. The smell lasted for six.

Avery’s seven now. Colic, eating cat food and smearing feces in her room are things of the past. She still keeps me on my toes and I’m still known to cry over her every once in a while. I’m hoping now I’ll get some sort of break until the next big phase in her life. Puberty!


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