Pepita

A Representative Sample of Frances’s Vocabulary, Arranged Alphabetically

Applesauce
Between
Clean
Dump Truck
Everybody
Fart
Gnome
Happy
I
Jump
Kitten
Loud
Mermaid
Nipple
Outside
Probably
Quiet
Right
Sometimes
Try
Uncle
Vomit
While
Xylophone
Yes
Zoom

Baby’s First Paragraph

“I put baby in car seat. I buckled this strap, but other strap was hard to do. I tried and I tried and I tried, but it was too hard.”

Baby’s First Complex Sentence

“Mommy hold Baby Daisy so that I can put sheet on this crib.”

A Rare Moment of Introspection

So, Frances and I went to K-Mart to buy her some baseball cards. While we were making our way from the car to the store, Frances told me that she did not want to ride in a cart, and that she did not want me to carry her. “Frances walk in store,” she said, steely determination audible in her voice. I agreed to give her a chance, despite my knowledge that such experiments in trusting Frances’s impulse control often end in tears.

We stepped inside the automatic doors, and I let Frances lead the way. We weren’t in a hurry, so I was willing to let her explore. At one point, while contemplating a display of lawn ornaments, she said, “Keep your hands to yourself” and promptly brought her arms to her sides and laced her fingers across her middle. This is not a phrase that I’ve used with her, nor is it a gesture that I’ve seen before. It had the disciplined quality I’ve come to associate with daycare. I liked it.

I cannot, however, say that it was wholly effective. After administering such a self-admonishment, Frances was generally able to keep her hands off the commodities for, like, 8 seconds. It was better than her past average, but, still: After she picked up one too many garden gnomes and gazing balls, I said, “OK, kid. I have to carry you until we get to the baseball cards.”

Usually, this move prompts outraged shrieks of protest, but, this time, Frances just shook her head and said in a soft, resigned tone, “No can keep hands to yourself.”

A Bit of a Handful

Some might say (Oh, who am I kidding? Some do say. Mom, I’m looking at you.) that Ted and I are too permissive with Frances. I humbly and openly allow that this might just be a valid position. We’ve never been parents before, and we really have no idea what we’re doing. We are, moreover, old , and neither one of us understood children all that well even when we were children ourselves. We’re like a maiden aunt who expects little kids to enjoy ribbon candy, Paul Harvey, and tatting. We tend to relate to Frances as if she’s a short, chubby grownup, rather than that altogether different creature, the toddler. We try to get buy-in. We ask her, “Are you ready to wash your face and brush your teeth?” and we are flummoxed when she says, “No.” We speak to her as if her reason had authority, we have no idea how to respond to her total lack of logic, and, on those rare occasions when we try to be decisive and unequivocal, we have zero credibility.

I know all this. But I also know that Frances is, simply and essentially, a bit of a handful. She has been willful, demanding, and—in my opinion—just a little contrary since birth. I am aware that there are arguments in favor of nurture over nature to just about any evidence I could offer in support of my thesis. For example, one might say that Frances would not be soothed as an infant because she could feel her parents’ panic mount as she cried and cried, that not only were our efforts to calm her not calming, but they actually fed her anxiety, thus creating a self-aggravating loop of extreme displeasure. One might suggest that, as Frances grew up, our attempts to dissuade her from dangerous or otherwise unsuitable activities failed because we were not inventive enough or persuasive enough in our distractions. I will allow these objections, because I believe that there is probably some truth in them. But I will also tell you Ted and I believe quite strongly that Frances is now and has always been obstinate and willfully uncooperative.

For example, Frances loves the song “The Wheels on the Bus”. This is the first song she learned, and it remains her favorite. She has been known to spontaneously erupt in “The Wheels on the Bus” during storytime at the library. The fact that the librarian is trying to read a story to which the other children are trying to quietly listen does not dissuade her. Luckily, the children’s librarians are an understanding bunch, and, knowing Frances’s fondness for “The Wheels on the Bus”, they keep the song in heavy rotation. But, when it’s time to sing “The Wheels on the Bus,” Frances’s voice will not be heard in the preschool chorus. When everyone else is singing “The Wheels on the Bus”, Frances will most likely be running in circles, digging through the supply cupboards, or, possibly, sitting quietly reading to herself. Her ability to thwart our intentions is prodigious, and I do not think that this is down to Ted and me being overly lenient. I think this is down to Frances being a perverse little imp.

Ted and I do pull her out of the supply cupboards before she gets to the solvents. We also stop her from pulling all the tongue-depressors out of the drawer at the doctor’s office, nor do we allow her to handle the delicate objets d’art scattered about the homes of friends without babies. We don’t let her shoplift, or sniff glue. In general, we make every effort to curtail behavior that is dangerous or excessively irritating to others. Beyond that, we do kind of let her run amuck—me more than Ted, but we both tend to focus more on safety and basic civility than ideal comportment. Indeed, the only rule that we have absolutely, positively drilled into her wee stubborn head is that she is never, ever to go in the street. I guess we could try to use that as a model for instilling other rules, but, really, I don’t know that either one of us thinks that turning Frances into a docile little lady is quite as urgent as keeping her from being hit by a car.

We do sometimes try to channel her exuberance and adventurousness in constructive directions, but, even when that spirit and energy refuses to be channeled—which is most of the time—we’re glad that she’s exuberant and adventurous. She’s basically fearless (She used to be afraid of the coffee grinder, but now she grinds my beans every morning). She’s also creative and outgoing and silly and fun, and Ted and I are both willing to give credit to nature for those traits, too. She sure as hell didn’t get outgoing from us.

We realize, when we have a moment for calm contemplation, that spirited and cantankerous are pretty much the same thing, and that you have to take the frustration of dealing with the former to get the joy of witnessing the latter. Ted and I are both, no doubt, more temperamentally suited to raise a kid who likes to sit and color for hours or read books about sedimentary rocks than we are equipped to handle the wild child we have spawned. I’m sure that we would have loved that quiet kid, and that she would have surprised and delighted us in her own gentle way. But we got Frances instead. She’s a handful all right, and we wouldn’t have her any other way.

Frances’s Second Birthday Party

Menu for Frances’s Birthday Party

Finger Sandwiches in Three Varieties: Shallot-Parsley Butter, Smoked Salmon Cream Cheese and Cucumber, and Raspberry Jam (first two from Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres Handbook)

Cheddar Bunnies

Sweet Ginger Peach Tea, Iced

Pink Lemonade

Ice Cream: Chocolate and Vanilla

Chocolate Cupcakes (from How to Be a Domestic Goddess) with Seven-Minute Frosting (from The Joy of Cooking, 1953 edition) and colored-sugar sprinkles.