Separation Anxiety; Not

Last night Alison and I went into the city to help celebrate a friends 40th birthday. Zoe was left with Diane, a coworker (and friend) of ours. Although Zoe now has a nanny a couple of times a week, we still have not left her with someone who is feeding her dinner and doing the whole bedtime routine, so I was a little nervous. First I expected that Zoe would be in tears as we left. She was not. “Bye Mommy and Daddy,” we heard as we rushed out the door. Zoe waved to us from the window and shed not a tear the entire night. Zoe helped Diane find light switches, turned on the heater in her room at bedtime, showed her what books she liked to be read, and generally took charge of the situation. Ultimately I think she liked being the host and showing someone new around her toys. Diane probably acted excited having tea with her, whereas I have done teatime at least twice a day since the holidays. We even took her tea set on vacation with us. Enough with the tea! Anyway, with preschool starting just seven short months I’m happy that Zoe is capable of being separated from her parents, something I was beginning to have my doubts about.

We are in the midst of a handful of minor construction projects in preparation of the arrival of Zoe’s baby brother in seventy-one days. One of our projects is the preparation of Zoe’s new bedroom, the room that was previously our office. We told her that the room would soon be hers, and she seems excited about the prospect of a move down the hall. Every time we walk by the room she yells, “Mine,” and when we ask her what color she wants it she always answers blue, which surprised both me and Alison because green was always her favorite color until she learned how to say yellow. (For the record, she can identify a number of colors, but she can say red, blue, green and purple. And since I’m on the subject of identifying things, she recognizes the letters B, D, G, M, P, T and Z by specific words; baby, daddy, grandma (she says mama), mommy, grandpa (she says papa), Tallulah and Zoe. And as far as numbers, everything is two.) The move to her own room, which will probably take place at some point before we move the baby into her current room, will include the transition to a real bed. We are hoping that the novelty of having her own ‘grownup’ bed will outweigh her desire (and ability) to climb down and make the trek to our room.