Wanna be a baby…

When my daughter was much, much younger, I put together a little movie of still photos set to Paul McCartney’s song, Calico Skies. I used iMovie and tried to get a photo of her with each of our immediate family members.

We used to play the movie for her all the time, and she enjoyed watching it, and playing, “Who’s that?” with us.

My daughter hadn’t seen it in a while. But recently, in the car with Ms. Kaz, it came up on random play on my wife’s iPod (I bought her this really cool thing to hook it up to the car stereo system and use the touch-screen and steering wheel controls, but that’s another story).

My daughter became really upset. Not the “I didn’t get what I want” or “I am over-tired” upset. Rather, genuinely, real-tears, real-sad upset. Afterwards, she told Ms. Kaz that she “was upset about daddy.” We figured she associated the song with me, and missed me.

Then came Friday night…Ms. Kaz was out, so it was just me and the kid. We were watching YouTube (greatest thing for parents who want to show their kids all the crap we used to watch when we were younger), and she said she wanted to watch some of the movies I had made. I thought she’d like to watch the Calico Skies video with me.

Well, we are never watching that video again…

My daughter still became genuinely upset. She kept making me play it over and over again. She was crying and saying, “I don’t want it to stop! I don’t want it to stop!”

Finally, after a few playings, she began to tell me, “I want to be a baby! I don’t want to grow up! I do, I do want to be a baby!”

I could not console her. It was beginning to upset me, as well. “Sweetie, I love you the way you are! Don’t you like being a big girl?”

“No! I want to be a baby!” she cried.

I tried telling her all the things babies cannot do, but nothing worked. Finally, I just had to stop the video. Eventually, she calmed down. But it took a long time (as it has been lately, but that’s yet another post!).

Eventually, she no longer wanted to be a baby. I think the talk about what babies cannot do began to work. “Babies can’t eat pizza… or ice cream… or jelly beans… or drink fizzy…” etc, etc, etc.

I don’t know if this is a reaction to the baby coming? I would think that wouldn’t happen until the baby was born, and she was no longer the center of attention (as much as we say we are going to try to continue to give her attention, it is inevitable that there will be times she doesn’t get all she wants). I don’t really know how to handle it.

Last night, it happened again, at bedtime. My daughter wanted me to sing the song, and again we got the, “I don’t want it to end. I want to be a baby.” Ms. Kaz had earlier suggested letting her “Be A Baby” for a while if she feels she needs to. We told her last night that she could be a baby if she wanted to, and asked what we could do for her. She responded, “No! I want to be a real baby!”

I’m just at a loss here.