Faith the drama queen

Faith is developing to be such a drama queen these days. This little girl of ours has started to display a lot more of her emotions through little actions and vocally, of course. Some of it can be downright amusing, sometimes exasperating and at other times, causing the people around her (namely me most of the time :)) to feel like tearing their hair out in frustration.

She babbles a lot at times for no apparent reason. It seems to be as if she's discovered the spectrum of her vocal cords and the different noises it can create. Hence, she makes a lot of noises just to experiment with it.

And when she stirs awake from her sleep at night (which actually happens quite often), she would cry out for us to go attend to her. Most times, I would be the one to go in to pacify her and get her back to sleep. However, there are times when I'm busy or occupied with some chores and Louis would be the one to go in. Somehow, she would sensed that its not me and would cry pitifully until I appear. At the sight of me, she would reach out her 2 little arms for me to carry her in my arms. Of course when I do take over from Louis to carry her, she would immediately stop her crying, settle down with a little sigh and drift back to sleep :)

Each time Louis and I go through the same scene with her at night, he would shake his head and quietly mouthed to me in the room as I carried Faith in my arms about how "manja" or "teh" she is. Most time, I'm rather pleased by this. Apart from the fact that it establishes the level of trust she has in me to comfort her (thus, boosting my confidence level as a mom), I get this nice, warm, cosy feeling that makes me wanna say "YES! She's a mummy's girl!" ;)

Fortunately or unfortunately, mummy's girl typically regains her growing independence in the day. Just last week, my mom was in the midst of changing her diapers and as usual, Faith would be squirming and climbing all around, making it difficult to wear her diapers. So, I raised my voice and scolded her. I had thought nothing about it after. But after the change of diapers, as I was with her on the sofa bed in the living room, I started to talk to her. Somehow, she avoided my eyes and turned away. I tried to put my face in front of hers several times just to make sure I was not imaging things. Indeed, she would turn her face away each time, avoiding all eye contacts with me, even when I held her at eye-level. Suddenly, my little girl seemed to be interested at every little thing to the left and right of my face.

Louis was just standing behind me when it all happened and when I looked up at him, he was laughing. I thought our daughter was either sulking or being angry with me for scolding her. Louis felt that she might be feeling sheepish for her actions. She finally relented to make eye contacts when I swing her up and down, a trick guaranteed to illicit laughter and giggles from her.

Which leads us to the conclusion that Faith might be understanding us and knows when she is being scolded for bad behaviour. Twice when she was playing with Louis' cellphone and either dropped or threw it on the floor, Louis raised his voice and sternly said "Faith!". At which point, this new drama queen's face immediately crumpled and she started bawling her eyes out. Even though its rather amusing, I'm a little annoyed by it becos she never seemed to be "tamed" when I raise my voice to scold her. Instead, she would sometimes smile back and me or giggle, thinking that I'm playing with her. Or, like what I described earlier. She would avoid all eye contacts me. Sigh...

Last Friday, she was sitting in her high chair having dinner when she decided to lean forward and gnaw on the plastic nob on the tray of her chair. My mom pulled her back to sit upright and slightly admonished her. At this, our little drama queen's face scrunched up, she drew up her chest and held her breath for a long while before letting it explode with a loud and heartfelt wail. Its the kind of wail that she lets loose when she falls and hurt herself quite painfully but for the first few seconds, the pain is so excruciating that there isn't any sound to her cries? Well... she cried like that and I was asking my mom if she pulled her back a little too forcefully, but my mom said she didn't. Besides, I was there myself too and it didn't seem as it if it was a painful pullback.

All of these has lead us to conclude that our little girl is developing to be a regular drama queen. And while its largely amusing for us cos she's still a baby, I'm fearing that as she gets older, this little girl would become a mull-headed, stubborn little girl. For once, I would like to be proven wrong!