Ruby, the Kissing Bandito

Well, hopefully not so much anymore.  Today marks three months since we arrived home with her, and, of course, we have had so many adventures and changes and things to learn about each other in a short amount of time.  To be sure, we are far from finished, but I guess you never are, so I'm feeling pretty happy and zen with things at the moment (at least, this very, tiny moment when Ruby is napping, Finn is at school, Gus is watching cartoons and I am in a room where I can't see any dirty diapers, laundry or dishes).

But something funny happened today that made me think about something that Ruby did for the first few days that we were home, and I'm now realizing that my interpretation at the time was way off base.  So, when we got on the plane to fly home with Ruby, I had a few magazines in my bag in case I had a few minutes to zone out on the airplane.  Needless to say, I did not, but I was glad I had them because I pulled them out and let Ruby look at the pictures and rip up the pages for entertainment on the trip.  During the flight, I noticed that she loved to look at pictures of faces - particularly all the ads with close-ups of models and the like.  And, of course, most of these beautiful ladies were white.  She would look at the page for a few minutes and then start madly kissing the picture, which I of course thought was adorable.  Even after we were home, she would find discarded magazines in the trash and take them out to kiss the faces in them.

At the time, I attributed this behavior to her being a girl.  Having raised two boys who never once glanced at pictures of real people, but rather preferred books with pictures of lizards and dinosaurs and tractors, I thought this to be a sign that girls and boys really are different.  Girls, being so relational, would naturally be drawn to the human face.  Boys, not so much.  I rejoiced, happy to know that I really would have someone to talk to about the important stuff of life in a few years.  After a few weeks maybe, I never saw Ruby do that again, but I didn't think much of it since I was so busy noticing all of her other cute little habits and developments.

So today, I was sitting here at the computer checking my email, and Ruby came over from whatever little mess she was making and started madly kissing my leg.  She is really affectionate, and loves to come over for a little kissing session from time to time, so it wasn't so strange or anything, but it just made me remember how she used to do that with the magazines and realize that she doesn't do it anymore.  So, naturally, I can't just let something like that pass by totally unanalyzed, or what kind of obsessive-compulsive person would I be?  I have come up with two possible theories, although maybe it was something totally different that I haven't thought of yet.  One thought I had was that we had sent a little photo album over with a traveling family for Ruby to start looking at us and getting used to our faces.  I could imagine the caregivers over there showing her the pictures and teaching her to kiss our pictures, as they were generally the most demonstrative people I've ever met.  And then, since she was used to kissing the pictures, even though she now had us in the flesh, the pictures of random white ladies in a magazine probably seemed more familiar to her than our tired-looking mugs in person.  (Also, I look alot like a model, so clearly I can see why she was so confused!).

So that theory kind of makes sense, and it makes me laugh that maybe she really couldn't tell the difference.  But then I was thinking about how babies engage in all sorts of attachment-promoting behavior such as being cute, crying, and, as they get older, hugging and kissing.  Babies are no dummies - they know where their next meal is coming from, and they know they need to keep our attention to get it.  So then what about a child who has not had one particular person there for them to develop that give and take with?  When a baby has had lots and lots of different people coming and going in her life ever since she was born, would she perhaps be a little confused about where she needed to direct her love in order to make her way in the world?  I'm not sure (although I am sure there are probably books dedicated to this subject that I could read, but I most likely won't do that), and it doesn't really matter, since now she's all about kissing my leg while I'm writing emails, so I think she sorted it out.  Ruby's a smart cookie, and those girls may be pretty and all, but I haven't seen any of them at our house cutting up bananas or making their famous spaghetti a la Ragu.  Now, if they do start coming around, I'm definitely putting them on diaper duty.