6
Jun
Object Impertinence - Or - How Daddy Became a Second-Class Parent
Topic: Kai and Eidan
About a week ago Eidan entered his “attachment” phase of development. This is part of his realization of what’s called object permanence: he’s realized that just because something is out of his range of vision, it doesn’t cease to exist. One clear sign of this is that he’ll drop or throw a toy out of sight, and then look for it (yesterday he gleefully played a game with Kai, where he would throw a ball through the hallway railing, and it would land out of sight down the stairs, and then Kai would toss it back up to him). Another clear sign is that when I hold him now, and then Maria leaves the room, he screams. And keeps screaming, and staring longingly at the doorway, until she comes back. Babies will latch on to one person during this phase, and when they’re tired or cranky, no other person will do. When Kai was this age, he attached himself to me, but Eidan’s got a serious case of the mommy’s. So now I’m going through what Maria endured with Kai - life as a second-class parent. Eidan’s happy to be alone with me when he’s in a good mood, but when the chips are down, I just won’t do at all. So I’m trying not to take it personally, and I’m hoping that this phase won’t last too long. My step-father’s a psychologist, and he’s told me there’s a saying that the first child is the father’s child, and the second child is the mother’s child. We’ll see how things go, but I think that may end up being true with our boys.
A couple other Eidan related observations while I’m here:
- Is the name Aidan the new Michael? There’s another baby named Aidan a few houses down from us, there’s one on Kai’s baseball team, there’s one in his karate class, a friend of mine recently named his baby Aidan, etc. To avoid sounding like obnoxious snobs we decided to pronounce Eidan’s name like the Irish Aidan (as we didn’t want to spend his entire childhood correcting people with, “actually, it’s Ay-dan”). So for all practical purposes he’s another of the apparently growing number of Aidans, which I used to think was a fairly uncommon name. Maybe it’s just the large number of Irish in Philly?
- One thing that’s great about babies is their complete lack of impulse control. The pleasure center of Eidan’s brain is hard-wired to his arms and legs. When he experiences joy, his entire body flails with glee. Imagine if adults were like that.
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