This weekend we went back to Iowa to see my parents and my sister.  The little angel was her normal, rambuctuous, precocious self.

On Saturday night, my sister and I were giving the little angel a bath when she admitted the parenting thing looked hard.  She said she wasn't sure she was ready for parenthood after watching Elmo twice in one day.  I laughed and said nobody is ready for parenting, that I myself often didn't feel like the adult in the room.

In retrospect, that's a lie.

The thing is that once you give birth, your eyes are no longer your own, at least not when the little angel is in the room.

We went to the Henry Doorley Zoo, which is an awesome zoo.  It's in Omaha, which is not a particularly glamorous city, but the zoo has always been its claim to fame.  The aquarium there, I would have to say, rivals at least the Shedd in Chicago.  We've visited both in the past year, and watching sharks swim over your head in the tunnel at the HD is an awesome and powerful experience.  But even when the shark was directly above me, so close that I could've counted the intertwining rows of teeth, I couldn't even stop to fathom its nearness for needing to know at all times exactly where the little angel was.  My eyes are not my own anymore.

My eyes need to see her when she is with me, at least now, when she is so young and needs me to watch over her.  I wish they were my own, the way I wish I could've seen The Sopranos tonight at its regularly scheduled time. It is my favorite show - well, it rivals Grey's Anatomy - and though it may seem silly to rate a television show up with my daughter's bedtime, it does.  But of course, the little angel wins. She wins because she is made up of my skin, just as Amy so aptly put it.  I can't think straight when she's crying, even though I know a toddler should have the right to cry, just as a baby does.

It was easier to let her cry when she was a baby, because then I always figured she didn't really know what was going on.  Now that she does, now that she cries for me, and me specifically, it is like someone has shut down my neorological functioning when she is crying for me. Oh, sure, I try to ignore it, don't want to spoil her and all that. I do want her to become independent and function by herself in this strange world, but there is a part of me still that wants to gather her up in my arms at all times as she is young, knowing that someday she will cry for a boy, or a girl, or someone other than me when she is sick, or sad, or scared. 

There will come a day when I have to take back my eyes, for both of our sakes.

It's just not now.  For now, the sharks are literal, and I can still shield her from most of them, and I should.

Because I am the adult in the room.