Ada Verastic Needs Me, And It Makes Me Feel Like A Rock Star

When I thought about this post, I was going to title it, “Ada Verastic Is Learning Bad, Bad Things,” but I decided against the title because although I still think that Ada Verastic is learning bad, bad things, I decided that the most important part of the post is actually how much I love these bad, bad things that she’s learning. Let me explain.

Although very cute, this baby in the picture is not Ada Verastic.

Ada Verastic turned 4 months on Saturday – can you believe it?! It feels like it was just yesterday that I gave birth to her, brought her home, and introduced her to you. I was just looking at the pictures on my phone of the day we left the hospital and her outfit on her first night home. She looked like a boy because she was dressed in a white and dark blue onesie. That’s what happens when you don’t find out the sex of the baby and end up not having any girly clothes.

Anyway, let me tell you what Ada Verastic has been doing (and she started doing this about a month ago, but it has become more and more now). She might be sitting with Igwe, hanging out, and she’s fine. She’s busy staring at the TV screen, or at Igwe’s phone screen and trying to tap at it, and like I said, she’s doing fine. But then, she spots me passing by and she bursts out crying for a few seconds till she forgets that I passed by, and then she’s quiet again. Until I pass again, of course. She will do this over and over, and if I come and sit down on the other sofa, she will start crying hysterically while staring at me. Then she’ll be quiet as soon as I pick her up. And she even sweetens the deal with a big toothless smile.

She does the same thing when she’s with other people. Like this past Saturday when we were out to celebrate my grandma’s birthday with friends and family. She let people hold her, but after a while, she was done with being carried by other people. She became fussy whenever anyone else touched her, so I (and Igwe) held her the rest of the time.

I have heard (from other moms) that this kind of behavior is a bad one because I won’t be able to get anyone to help me with my baby since she doesn’t want to be carried by other people, but I kind of don’t care what people are saying. It’s possible that they are right, and I am wrong – especially since I’m a new mom, and they have been moms for years. Still, I have learned that moms like to give unsolicited advise with conviction because they think that they know it all and if it happened to their baby, then it must be true for all babies, especially yours.

It’s like when this lady told me that babies do not ever sleep at night, and that even as old as 12 months old, they will still wake up every couple of hours at night. Ada Verastic started sleeping for hours at night when she was two months old. Most times, she does not wake up at night, but if she does, it’ll be just once.

I remember a coworker telling me that his twenty year old daughter was so independent that she did not need him anymore. He said that once, she asked him to change the oil in her car, and he was so excited because it made him feel needed again. I was still pregnant when he told me this story, and I thought it was funny and cute, but I could not fully relate. Until now. It’s not that I want Ada Verastic to refuse everyone and want only me, but that every time she does it, it makes me feel like a rock star. And I like feeling like a rock star.