Silenced mommy

As of yesterday, mommy is all quiet. A vicious bout of laryngitis has taken her voice completely for a while.

In other words, we're experiencing a whole new sort of mommy-baby relationship.

Mommy used to sing to Mara a lot. Instead, yesterday we danced to a phone playing Music Together. It was odd, Mara kept wanting to go to the source of the sounds. I put her down, she checked it out, then crawled to the ukulele and dragged it toward me. Yup baby, I'm aware it's better when I play and sing, I just can't right now.

I smile and rap on the instrument's wooden body along with the music. It kinda works, but we soon decide to move on to other things.

Daddy is taking over like a champ. For the whole time we were together yesterday evening he was doing a three-fold narration of what everyone is doing: himself, Mara and mommy. Mara seems to accept this change just fine. As long as her epic adventures don't go unsung, I guess.

This morning, though, it was all different.

Daddy is exhausted after staying up till around 2 am with work and chores and heat. He's snoring away wrapped up in his blanket. It's 5 am and Mara's hands are, just like the day before, on my cheeks banging away happily. Her long winded chanting seems to say: The sun is up! The sun is up! And so am I! time to play!

I open my mouth to tell her "Good morning" but nothing comes out. Yup, this morning is different alright.

She wiggles and tells me a few Aaaarhs and Baahs, then stops and watches me carefully. I know it's my turn, but today I cannot.

I smile and decide to do a special version of her favorite "I Love You" ritual.

The [Silent] Making of The Bread

I gently turn Mara onto her back, lean over softly and blow a gentle breeze on the baby's face. She looks up intrigued. This is as good as I can think of to announce what we're about to do.

I pick up some invisible Flour with my bare hands and drop it on her belly with a splash of dust.

By the second step, "a Little Bit of Salt" dropped from my thumb&index fingertips, Mara is onto me. She smiles and waits for the next step.

Water.

I pour it from over her shoulder in an invisible bowl, onto her belly on top of the flour and salt.

Then we Knead, Knead, Knead. We knead the shoulders, the arms, the chest and ribs, the chubby quads and calves and little tiny toes. Sometimes I do her frowny eyebrows too, but today I skipped.

We put it in the oven.

I lean over her tiny body and cover it with my own, kinda smothering her but not really. I'm a big oven compared to the Mara-loaf of bread :-)

This is when it gets tricky. I normally hum and buzz as I imagine an oven sounding, until a bing-bing-bing sound announces that the baking is done.

Today, my oven was broken and quiet and Mara noticed. My loaf started to squirm to get out and play.

I sniffed her body from belly to cheek to see if the bread was "done". She stopped and smiled and waited once more for the fun. I followed up with the next two satisfied sniffs - freshly baked bread, just like babies, smells wonderful!

On a normal day I would declare that "It's good! It's good to eat!" and happily munch away at her belly while she giggles. Today I softly kissed her for a first taste, then took small nibs at her ribs. She smiled widely and took in all the love.

I get up, she keeps the smile on and goes on her way off the bed to play. We are unconcerned friends again.

The Game Room as a Jungle

Later in the morning we are downstairs in the game room, which we babyproofed with Grandma Tammy and Grandpa Gene (Thank you!!) so that Mara can roam around freely without much harm.

She bangs away at toys, gets up on her feet from play spot to cubes and back. She drops a plastic ball in the large cube with a round opening, and watches it fall. She moves things around and stares at the lights reflecting from the pool water through the windows.

She climbs her hands up and down on the wood rack that we set as a barrier to the other room.

Every now and then she comes at me for a pretend hug - I pick her up from my lounge chair onto my lap, and the next second Mara is turning wildly to scout the territories from this most convenient vantage point, just like a tribe hunter in the old days. She sees a new object that sparks her interest, and struggles to get back down and on her way again.

Silent mommy is silent. Haha. I am loving this experience so much. After all the beloved visitors and trips we've been having for the past months, this is likely the first moment in a long time when I actually just sink into the happiness of being Mara's mom. She's amazing, and fun, and full of joy, and all concerned with studying the universe. I am in awe.

Silent Book Reading

Mara goes on and picks up a book: high contrast animals. She moves the first two pages several times back and forth, checking out the contents. It seems like this one is not very satisfactory. She puts it down and gets the Ten Little Ladybugs. Those pages at least have bugs on them to explore. She wiggles it at me and I come to join her.

By the time I get there from my chair she has "read" the bugs and now wants a different book. I pick the one with the Three Little Ducks, planning to use as much as I can from my Sign Language repertoire. We have our own special sign for duck that Mara is in love with.

I go through it quietly. Pointing at each duck, then making the talking duck sign with my hand. I point at the frog and make a leaping frog gesture. I swerve my hand at the fish on the next page, and "talk" for the three little ducks in turn. I buzz around with my fingertips for the dragonfly, on the wood cube, on my cheek, on hers, then back on the page of the book. Then ducks again.

I'm starting to like this too, and by the time the little ducks get back to the Mother Duck safely we are both quite satisfied and stare at the back cover of the book for a little bit.

We had finished reading.

Mara had payed attention the entire time, all quiet like me. It's so nice to have some time just for us, uninterrupted, no distractions except for a bouncing kitty from time to time. Quietness isn't so bad right now. I'm starting to love early mornings.