Lost in Place

I taught her a terrible trick that is really cute and funny and never in a million years did I think she’d actually be able to pay attention enough to do it on her own. When she’s sitting at the edge of the bed or the couch (hello! she’s on the EDGE, of COURSE I’m RIGHT THERE!), she’ll throw herself off for me to catch her. She thinks it’s so fun and will do it over and over and over again. If I don’t put her close enough to the edge that she can just fall forward to fall off, she’ll actually push herself to the edge so she can. It’s very cute. Until I’m not paying enough attention and she does it when I don’t have my arms up and ready. I know these things happen. They happen to everyone. That certainly doesn’t mean I won’t try to prolong the inevitable though.

Another game she’s learned – one that she actually taught me – is bouncing down the stairs. If I go down the stairs at a decent pace with her in my arms, it bounces her. (It’s only the last few stairs. I hate my stairs. They’re slippery.) A few weeks ago I noticed that every time I did it, she would open her mouth in a really wide grin and grab on to my shoulder. So we do it every time we go down the stairs. Sometimes when I’m not even paying attention and just walking down the stairs. I get to “that stair” and she’ll look at me and open her mouth and grab on to my shoulder. She’s ready to bounce. Other times, I’ll get to her stair and tell her “get ready” and she’ll grab on and open her mouth and down we go. It’s hilarious.

She loves to play “Where’s the baby?” It’s not so much Peek-A-Boo as it is “hide the baby under a blanket and let her claw her way out.” When I make the beds, I sit her on it and I put the blankets up over her. She flails and kicks while I say “Where’s the baby?” Then I pull up the blanket and she grins and giggles. We do it with her clothes and her blankets and anything that will cover her. She loves it. She does play Peek-A-Boo in the curtains though. She loves that. But only when SHE gets to run the curtains – keep your hands off! DUH!

Curtains…. Oh my. This child spends more time looking out the windows than probably anything else she does. And if it keeps her happy, I’m more than happy to stand there with her. Yes, fingerprints on the windows and all. She’ll put her hands on the windows, play with the locks, if she sees people outside she’ll jabber up a storm. If there are curtains on the window – she’s in heaven. She’ll pull on them and play Peek-A-Boo with them and put them in her mouth and yank and twist and attack and giggle.

She does giggle now. Sometimes. A little. She’s still not a big laugher. She’s more of the “I’ll be hyper as hell to let you know I’m happy” type. Every once in a while you can get a big laugh out of her though and it’s the funniest thing. There’s really nothing that she will consistently laugh at but there are enough things that certainly amuse her to death each and every time. She had this spitting thing she would do with her lips. She would do it at you and then smile and giggle. For a few days if you’d do it at her, you were guaranteed a giggle. A big one. But it, like so many other amusing things, didn’t last.

A few weeks ago, we picked her up at day care and she was dangling her legs back and forth while the lady held her. Now every time she’s held to anyone’s side, she dangles her legs. It’s very cute because you can tell it’s not something she even thinks about, she just does it. So that’s lasted a little while at least.

The other thing that has lasted forever and longer is this nasty cold. She’s spent the majority of this past month with one cold or another. She caught one about a week ago that sent us to the emergency clinic hours to see the doctor. Her cough was terrible and you could tell she was miserable. (Which, oddly enough, while sick as can be, hungry and tired, waiting for the doctor, she had the biggest giggle fit EVER. She laughed for probably five minutes straight because I would tell her “no” when she would try to rip the paper on the bed. Apparently it was HILARIOUS! She certainly was.) It seemed like half the town was in there that day with sick kids and luckily, she was no sicker than the rest of them. She does still have the cough and is a bit congested so she can’t sleep at all. But, hey, what’s new, y’know?

She’s getting to the point that not only is she interactive, she will initiate it. She loves to just sit and play or lie in bed and play as long as you’re right there to play with her. Walk away – even for a second – and all you get is shrieking and shrieking and more shrieking. Oh and likely some whimpering. But as long as she knows she has your attention, oh she’s an angel. (Yes, she knows how to work her parents already.)

She knows when she’s doing something that should get a response, she also knows when she’s doing something she shouldn’t be doing. You can see the conniving little glint in her eye as she reaches for the remote and starts pushing buttons. She’s grabbing absolutely everything. If it’s within her reach, it goes in her hands. And if it goes in her hands, it’s immediately put to her mouth. And if she can’t reach it, she’ll throw her body toward it TO reach it - whether you’re paying attention or not. Anything we walk past, she has to touch and in her mind, you really have to let her.

Random Things I’ve Learned During the Eighth Month:

-The only thing worse than being sick is watching your baby be sick. Not being able to do anything about it but listen to the hacking up of lungs, the air not going in through the nose at all, the whining and the moaning that is baby for “please, Mom, make it stop, it hurts.”
-Who needs baby toys when there are remotes and cell phones and cameras and computers to play with?
-Even when they’re not mobile, they can get into everything.
-Sick babies are all too often NOT happy babies.
-Who knew so much amusement could come from something so small and non-deliberate?
-Watching a baby eat something solid for the first – oh, I dunno – fifty times is SO FUNNY! (Solid in the sense of actual food to be mashed in her mouth, not before it gets there)