Parenting Without A License

Present Psychology

Posted by Kimberly on December 25th, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies, Diva Girl, Zen Baby, Kipple

Few things put the vastly different personalities of my daughters into stark relief like Christmas Morning.Diva Girl is a whirling dervish of excitement, blowing through the Christmas tree like the Tasmanian Devil on speed; The Zen Baby, not surprisingly, takes a more relaxed approach to the festivities.

Where Diva grabs her stocking and immediately unpends it all over the floor, thereby ensuring sensory overload what with the jumbled mess of toothbrushes, lipgloss, temporary tattoos and various odd and ends strewn about before her, Zen Baby is meticulous in her stocking excavation, each item withdrawn, examined, and exclaimed over before moving on to the next–until her sister grabs it and dumps it all over the floor for her, that is.

Within an hour of waking me up (at the crack of dark, but it’s one of the few times a year I don’t mind) and racing to the tree, Sabrina will have gone through all of her presents. Everything will have been catalogued, touched, and tested. Practically the minute she processes what the gift it, she’s moved on to the next thing. In her half of the room, the toys are scattered with reckless abandon, mixed, mingled, dropped where she was when the next thing caught her fancy. Regan, however, is still playing with the first toy she saw, and half of her packages remain ignored under the tree. It’s not that she’s not interested or lacking in gratitude, she just hasn’t gotten that far yet. She will, given time (and the mom-imposed restraint shown by her big sister), but it’s just not a priority to her. She likes this toy, and she will savour it.

Two very different little girls with two very different approaches to presents, and I suspect, life in general.  One who lives full throttle, out loud, determined to wring everything possible from every experience and constantly leaping before she looks, the other with the unique ability to immerse herself in life, to fully experience each moment before moving on to the next, and always careful to be sure exactly how high the ledge is before she jumps.    Both perfect in their own ways.