Whatever happened to the baby who just a few months ago was content to sit on her blanket and play with whatever toys were in front of her?
I’ll tell you what happened—you turned ONE.
Almost overnight, you decided that (1) creeping was for little babies and crawling was definitely the way to go, (2) if you crawl at warp speed you can get wherever you want to go before we have the chance to stop you (3) you inevitably want to be wherever we DON’T want you to be, and (4) if you get to where we don’t want you to be by crawling at warp speed, it’s most fun to attempt to shut the door on your parents before they can remove you from the off-limits location.
Eish.
Exhibit A: Mamma tries desperately to keep you out of the laundry room. The laundry room, dear Sammie, is the gateway to the garage, and therefore is the most heavily trafficked area in the house. This is the room that double’s as the dogs’ room because it’s where they go whenever we’re not home. This is also the room that has the floor that hasn’t been properly cleaned in months (Maybe even since you were born—it’s got that lovely earth tone color that hides a myriad of sins). Unfortunately, this is where the dogs’ water is kept, and you’ve decided that water in a blue feeder is the BEST THING EVER and therefore make a beeline to it whenever the door’s open. You compound on your fun by attempting to shut the door on me before I can get you out.
I say attempting because you haven’t yet figured out how to remove yourself from the door’s path to fully shut it, so instead you just keep shutting it on your legs or whatever random body part is in the way.
Oy.
Exhibit B: Mamma tries to cook dinner, and sets up a makeshift xylophone in the living room using her stainless steel bowls. You’re most interested in banging away at them…until you see me venture into the kitchen to get dinner prep underway. Then all bets are off because you turbo crawl yourself to the kitchen rug and start grunting away and signing bottle.
Did I mention you figured out how to sign “Bottle?” Before, you’d just sign it when you saw it. Now you think that we’re a 24/7 bottle restaurant and place your order (6 ounces, stirred not shaken, you’ll take your order to go) quite regularly. Seeing as how we’re currently trying to wean you from the bottle, this is not good. On the one hand, I want you to grasp the concept of signing to me to ease your frustrations, but on the other I can’t give in every time you ask for a bottle—if you had your way you’d never stop chugging the stuff! We’re able to avoid World War Three by signing “water” instead and giving you your sippy cup of water. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Ack.
This past weekend brought about a treasure trove of new memories and milestones. On Sunday, we went to pick cherries at a local farm (note to self: keep a close eye on you while snapping pictures; you kept grabbing the little buggers off of the tree and stuffing them in your mouth):
On Monday, we used our annual passes to go to the zoo with Nonni (I think the monkeys were your favorite—they kept grunting and doing monkey-speak so you felt right at home, even grunting and bouncing back). I am going to have to break down and learn the real names of the different species in the zoo. I could feel the other mammas glaring at me when I referred to seven different species of primates as a “monkey” each time when it clearly was not a monkey but a red haired Orangutan originating from Southeastern India. Hey, you’re a year old. You don’t know any better.
We capped off the perfect weekend by dressing you up lady bug style and taking you swimming for the first time. You couldn’t wait to go at first:
…but once you got there, you weren’t sure what the fuss was about.
Methinks I’ll actually brave swimsuit season this weekend and put on a suit to “swim” alongside you in the 18 inch kiddie pool.
In the midst of all of the cherry picking, monkey grunting and ladybug swimming, you found your pandora’s box of devleopment. The more fun discoveries included blowing kisses, giving kisses, and crawling to your Elmo balloon when we ask where Elmo is. I’m particularly fond of taking advantage of your understanding how to “cuddle” by asking you to cuddle with whatever you’re holding—whether it be Elmo, a toy or my sock (hey, you were going through the clean laundry in the basket and it seemed appropriate at the time).
If this is what the approaching summer break is going to be like, then sign me up!
love you, my bottle signing, turbo crawling, cherry stealing, monkey watching. ladybug swimmer!
Your mama
No comments:
Post a Comment