Anastasia crawled!

Anastasia crawled this morning. Really crawled on her hands and knees, not belly-scootched like she's been doing for a while. We were in the bathroom. I was going to take a shower, so I put her on the floor with a bunch of toys while I got ready. As usual, when I set her down, she landed on her hands and knees and stayed there for a minute. Usually she rocks that way for a while and then lowers herself to her belly and moves around that way. But today, she sat there very still and serious for a minute, and then she crawled: first one hand, then one knee, and then the other hand, then the other knee. She went about four steps before she lowered herself to her belly to play with a toy. But after weeks of watching her get frustrated as she tried to do this, I was very impressed!

Now, of course, she already seems to have forgotten how she did it, because when she tried again later, she got frustrated again. But of course it's only a matter of time--and a very short time, it looks like--before she's moving all over the place too fast to keep up with. My easy days of babywatching are over. Time to get ready to run after her all over the house.

Other tricks she's learned recently:

* Clapping. Mary and I both occasionally have clapped for her when she did something cool, but she suddenly started imitating it without really much prompting. Now she does it on cue. "Clap your hands!" I'll say, and usually she'll respond by clapping them and giggling, a big grin on her face. Adorable.

* Peek-a-boo. I definitely didn't teach her this, and we only played it a couple of times before she figured it out. I really don't think I'd done it more than once or twice--you know, the whole thing where I put a blanket on her head and say, "Where's Anastasia?" and then whip it off with a triumphant, "There she is!" But after we'd done this a few times, Anastasia started doing it herself. The first time, she used a book. She put it on her head like a hat and looked at me expectantly, with an unmistakable "I'm-playing-a-game-now!" face.

"Where's Anastasia?" I asked agreeably, although I didn't really think she was going to do it. But sure enough, she waited just a minute--with an impressive sense of comedic timing--before whipping the book off her head and grinning at me. "There she is!"

She really is at the best age now. I think I say that all the time, but it's true what a neighbor told me: she just keeps getting better.

I'm happy to be a mom

The other day I read an article in The Atlantic Monthly that talked about happiness. It claimed that although people say their children make them happy, having them record their level of happiness at specific moments throughout the day shows that parenting actually isn't their favorite activity--it ranks just above housework. That annoyed me. Maybe most people don't like parenting, I thought, but I certainly do.

But when I thought about it more, I had to admit that parenting is hard work. There's a reason why I look forward to Matt coming home every night so I can let him play with Anastasia while I do something else. There's a reason why I'm always happy when our neighbor Mary comes over to play with the baby. And although I enjoy playing with her tremendously, I like getting breaks, too. It's hard to hardly ever be able to do anything for yourself.

And yet, I think there must be something more to happiness than mere day-to-day moments. Even if your perceived level of enjoyment of daily activities is lower while you're taking care of children, there is another level at which they make us much, much happier. There must be, or people wouldn't keep wanting them. Yesterday my sister called me in a bad mood. "I feel generally dissatisfied with life," she said. I was surprised by my own reaction, because of course I knew what she was talking about. Everyone feels generally dissatisfied with life sometimes, right? And yet when she said it, my reaction was more one of commiseration than identification. Oh yes, I thought. I remember what that feels like. When did I last feel that way? Of course. It was when I was pregnant.

But I haven't felt a moment of it since Anastasia was born.

Does that mean I'll live happily ever after? Not necessarily. I suppose there might come a time in my life when I will again feel a vague, general discontent with my life. But right now, I can't imagine ever feeling that again. Yes, my day-to-day life might be hard or boring or filled with uninteresting activities like figuring out how to get poop stains off my jeans. But the big picture of my life is changed irrevocably toward happiness. I am, as Chesterton says, "at peace with the universe," even if I might be "at war with the world."

There are plenty of explanations for why having children would give people such a deep overall satisfaction with life, even in the face of daily irritations. The easiest explanation is the scientific one: we are biologically designed to reproduce, so having accomplished that makes us feel that we've satisfied a lifelong need. And maybe that is why.

Or maybe it's that Anastasia is such a perfect, lovely, beautiful, and blessed being that her mere presence in my life is a light that illumines everything it touches, giving me an overriding sense of peace, fulfillment, and joy.

Yeah, that second one is definitely it.