Baby Confusion

As you may know, Baby Selah is Noa’s baby. Her very. precious. baby.

Baby Selah is named after the “real” baby Selah. Who we adore. We also adore her parents, Liz and Yuya, who became dear friends of ours while we were in Japan.

Noa will often tell me that she is “Liz”, Baby Selah’s Mama, and that Martha is “Yuya”, her daddy.

Makes sense, right? She’s a smart one, at least we think so.

The confusion comes when you add a new baby to the mix. You see, Martha hasn’t really had a baby of her own, except for the dirty cloth one that she sleeps with, that really doesn’t look like a real baby. I had been hoping to get her a baby baby before our baby arrives, as a special pre-cursor of things to come. And then, with all the baby-sharing issues we’ve been having recently, with Martha wanting to hold and care for Baby Selah, but Noa really being Liz, Baby Selah’s Mama, I decided it would be a good idea for Noa to get and wrap and give Martha’s new baby to her.

And it worked great. Noa really enjoyed picking out the baby (well, picking out several… it was hard to narrow down with all the choices! )

*side note: do you know what baby dolls can do these days???? or rather, is there anything they can’t do?? I was hard pressed to find a good-sized, soft, normal- looking doll that wouldn’t dirty more diapers than the ones that are already being dirtied in this house.

Anyway, so she really enjoyed picking it out, trying to keep it a secret (though she didn’t get that we don’t talk about surprises in front of the people we are trying to surprise), wrapping it up, and presenting it to Martha just as soon as I gave her the ok.

And it was all very good and sweet for about 5 minutes, until Noa started realizing that Martha’s new doll had a lot of cool amenities that baby Selah doesn’t, like: clothes that actually fit her (her originals were lost long ago), or a paci that is made for her mouth, or (and this is a real kicker) a diaper that is not imaginary like the ones I always “hand” her for baby Selah.

Anyway, thus began the newest saga in our family of baby-lovers of trying to figure out how sharing works with baby dolls and baby dolls’ things and baby dolls’ mamas all that good stuff.  It’s a good lesson for all of us, myself included, and can be a lot of fun.

One particular moment that made me giggle last week, and still makes me smile was during a period of happy sharing.  Martha had gladly relinquished her new baby (who is still called “Martha’s new baby” for the most part, though occasionally she is called “Baby Aunt Karyn” or “Baby Lily”)  to Noa who had sweetly convinced her that she could take care of baby Selah for the morning.

So I heard Noa calling Martha from another room: “Liz!  LIZ! Come over here.  LIZ!” (for those of you who don’t get it, Martha was baby Selah’s Mama for the morning, so she had become Liz, right?  I know, she’s a genius!

Unfortunately, Martha is a little slow in the area of baby-mama logic and had no clue that Noa was even talking to her.  So Noa tried again, and, I am not joking, this is what actually came out of her mouth:

“Martha.  MARTHA!  Come in here.  Oh… wait…  I’m Martha. (get it?  Martha’s new baby’s mama?)…  uggh.  LIZ! LIZ!!!!….”

In between chuckles, I intervened and helped Martha figure out that when she has baby Selah, SHE IS LIZ.

So that’s my life.  I can’t believe I just wrote so stinkin’ much about fake babies and their names and their mamas.  But I did.  And it makes me smile all the time. I hope it made you smile too.

Tags: Martha, Noa