Yesterday I painted my kitchen. I am planning to write about the whole painting fiasco here in a little bit. I don’t have a large kitchen so I didn’t expect that it would take more than a day to do all the prep work, the painting and the clean-up, but I knew that part of the day Norah would have to entertain herself. This is not unusual for us, she entertains herself very well. I am not the kind of mother who wants to be up in Norah’s business all day long. In fact, when I have to be all up in her business I get sort of cranky and snappy. I just need my own time and my own space every once in a while.

Usually this works out fine. Norah does not need me to entertain her all day. She is perfectly ok playing by herself for a while, and for this I am very grateful. But yesterday I noticed something  interesting.

I put our babygate in the space between the kitchen and the dining room so I could paint while Norah was awake and not run the risk of her pulling a paintcan on her head. I kept a good eye on her, but I was not actively entertaining her or anything. For a few minutes, when I first put the gate up, she stood at it and talked to me, jabbering and singing and throwing things over the gate. Then she crawled away and things got quiet. A little too quiet…if you know what I mean. So I called “Norah?” and she answered “Geh?”. I looked around the corner and saw her reading a book. No big deal. Then a few seconds later she dragged her toys over to the baby gate. She accumulated a few and then sat down at the gate to play.

And in that little gesture, the desire to be near me even if we were not engaged in the same thing, I saw Rusty.

I know, that is also a developmental thing, the looking and searching for and wanting to be near Mama, but I also know what Norah’s daddy is like. He does not like to be alone when he does things, even if not being alone means someone sitting near him and doing something totally different. He will frequently just come and sit in the room I am in, not doing anything, just being near me. Which, you know, is sweet. He likes my company. He is a quality time person. So while I know that Norah’s behavior was probably more of an acting out of her developmental stage than anything else, I wonder if Norah will be similar to Rusty in that need-to-be-near-ness?

And here I was, thinking she was my little clone…