Remember way back, way, way, way back when I thought my Sunny was going to be a social outcast? Remember when she wouldn't crawl, made no effort with the other babies, kept to herself, studied quietly in the corner? We have reached new ground folks. That was Sunny then and this is Sunny now.

 

This morning, in spite of sickness and a rough sleep schedule, Sunny and I met our friends Jill & Fia at a Baby Boogie Class. Baby Boogie consist of 80 babies in a padded room roaming free while 80 Mommies and Nannies sing baby songs, dance, hop, jump, use their fingers as puppets, and make silly faces all while wrangling one year olds into their respective holding patterns.

Other babies listened, ohhhed and ahhhed  but Sunny, my former bookworm, darted from the back of the room to the front, by herself, and without ever looking back to find me even once. It was if she was trying to get away from me. Picture if you will, me in tube socks tip toeing through baby-dom whispering Gracie, Gracen Rose! She climbed aboard other Mother's laps, over other babies, stopping only to clap for herself and occasionally wave to strangers. This reminds me of something Handsome Al Taylor told me last weekend, when your kid runs away you want to say Where are you going? Do you realize that you don't know anyone on this Earth but me?

My little lady is now an (almost) 10 month old. She is, despite my best efforts, fiercely independent. I am back to picturing her underage, shimmying on the tops of bars in Meat Packing District 16 years from now. Sigh.

"New York? No, no, no Mama I want to leave you and move to L.A. one day!"

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