The best baby ever

Last year when I was pregnant, a woman I sat next to at Seder said about children, "If you expect them to be bad, they will be. If you expect them to be good, they will be better than you ever imagined." Yelena has definitely proved that adage true. She is the best baby ever.

Our flight left Chicago 3 hours past her bedtime and she didn't sleep in the airport or more than a few hours on the plane to Heathrow, yet she didn't cry at all and was super smiley, charming the airline staff and delighting us the whole way. She did cry on descent into Spain, which is totally understandable given her little ears and her having slept about 3-4 hours during the same amount of time in which she would typically sleep 10-12. Then she waited patiently while we sorted out our lost luggage fiasco, got the rental car, drove through congested Madrid traffic and checked in to the hotel in Aranjuez. Even in the hotel room when she was on Chicago time and wanted to play and we desperately wanted to sleep and put her in her crib, she cooed and kicked rather than crying and wailing -- which is what I wanted to do.

There was no clock in our hotel room in Aranjuez, most probably because it was adjacent to a casino, and Yelena and I didn't get down to serious sleep until about 3:30 AM, so we accidentally slept until noon. Ah, the drawback of the black-out shade. We then drove down to Malaga, about a 5 hour drive, stopping a few times for nappy changes, nursings and lunch at a roadside tapas bar where tiny morsels of ham were sprinkled on just about everything. (Welcome to the Land of Pig.) Now, this is a baby who typically does not enjoy the car and was in a different, less ergonomic car seat than usual. She was wonderful. I sat in the back, navigating and entertaining her for the duration of the drive.

When we got the the Malaga airport (which was crazy busy at 7:30 PM, whereas the Madrid airport was empty at 6:00 PM, go figure) to pickup Tony, we sat in the car for an hour while Eli went to find him. (Eric was supposed to meet us there, but was unable to make his train from Madrid to Malaga because he got stuck in France -- at a few different train stations! -- due to the protesting students taking over train stations. He did arrive safely at 11:00 PM, after many a debacle. We have all earned our massages.) Finally, when we were leaving the parking lot she had a tiny melt-down, was nursed and napped for most of the almost hour drive to the hotel.

We've always known Yelena has a great temperment, but this proves it. It also proves my theory that love is the constant that makes babies thrive. She was in new environments, jet-lagged, under-slept and with no semblance of a schedule, yet she was perfectly content. So many parents are obsessed with getting their baby on schedule and following it like they were Swiss, both them and their offspring panicking at the slightest interuption, as if life always sticks to a schedule, but I think over-rigorous scheduling -- like flooding your children with material possessions -- is a substitute for the loving attention children need. Yelena wasn't where she usually was doing what she usually does when she usually does it. But her Mommy and Daddy were there and attentive and that's all she wants.

Dr. Sears: 1; Schedule Nazis: 0