Last night we slept well, just her and I snuggled up. Our first twenty-four hours alone together, happily accomplished. Mr. Dzedze flew out of town for work again and despite missing him, we had a beautiful mama-daughter day yesterday. We danced and sang songs, lazied looking to the sky in our big blue family hammock, and pulled faces at each other while music played. My Mama called from the UK with news. Flights booked, she’ll be coming to see us next month. Her first trip to see her first grandchild.

This morning our helper arrived. Aunty Thembi held our baby as I made myself breakfast and ate. She laughed, “Wow! She’s so strong, you would think she’s three or four months old, not two.” My daughter was playing her favourite game - standing. For the past few weeks, morning noon, and night she’s insisted on being held up so she can push through her legs to stand. Each time Aunty Thembi tried to cradle her in a typical way, she fussed herself back to standing again. “I’m not a baby!” Thembi sweetly mocked in a baby voice, giving words to our little one’s ways.

There are two types of visitors that have entered my child’s world. Those who talk to her as though she is a languageless baby, and those who talk to her as though she is a whole human being with a voice, ready for conversation. The former, overwhelms her and has her clinging to me tight. The latter she relaxes into, and there she arrives in all her cheek and charm. I recognize my own ability to hear her in this and relax a little deeper into the way I’m choosing to parent. When I reflected on this a few days ago with Jacqlyne she said, “Yeah, you’ve shown us how to listen to her.”

Over the last few weeks, I’ve attempted productivity. Tried with all might to find some kind of pattern, or routine - a rhythm that would help me get things done. But baby clocks tick and chime in different ways to man-made ones. They don’t sync to the calendar and have no care for to-do lists. The writing can wait. The sessions can too. The last few weeks I’ve caught myself thinking, “I haven’t done anything” and I’ve felt somehow behind, seeing my self-prescribed tasks unchecked. How wildly incorrect and misinformed of me though, and how symptomatic of society’s values too. I’ve somehow managed to overlook the might and power of what I am doing… Raising a child with all the presence and love in my body. Setting a standard for her whole life to come. I listen to her as a whole human with a voice. 

I let her sleep on my chest, I respond to her every little mutter, hold her in the right spot to gaze at something for several minutes and pace up and down and up and down the home with a bounce in my step - this attention sets the pace for how she treats herself through life. It announces the standard for her self-worth, and every relationship she journeys through will be cradled in this reality we build for her now. My greatest accomplishment will be to raise a healthy, happy, grounded, spirit-filled, emotionally intelligent human, and that’s what my every day is filled with now. If nothing gets done other than that, I celebrate these days. It all starts here. In the times she will never remember in mind, and forever remember in body.