Author: heather

Can it really have been a year ago that I pushed little Maddi, puffy, purple and cone headed, into this world? Sometimes it seems like such a short time since our wee one joined us, and sometimes (such as when she decides she’s had it with napping) it seems forever.

Yes, exactly a year ago I was pushing and screaming and grousing about Maddi’s “stupid melon head” — which of course has rounded out into a very nice shape by now.

In the past year, she’s gained some 14 pounds and nearly 10 inches in height, begun eating a few dozen different foods, has gone from crawling to climbing to cruising to standing, and says 30 words and repeats many others with prompting. This month, she learned to stack blocks, “bounce” the ball, play peek-a-boo with her hands if a towel’s not available, and call the cat by making kissing sounds with her lips. She’s learned the meaning of the word “gentle” and initiates applause if she thinks she’s done something praiseworthy. And she’s working on a bicuspid, to boot!

Tonight, Maddi woke up crying at 11:30, and as I snuggled the little one back to sleep, I realized that exactly a year previous, I was enjoying my long-awaited epidural and, unbeknownst to me, a mere 30 minutes away from the pushing stage. Ninety-five percent of me was anxious to see at long last the baby I’d carried for so long. The other five percent was trepidatious, sensing that inside me kicked a restless little maniac who would doubtless cause many sleepless nights for decades to come. And sure enough, as predicted by her in-utero behavior, Maddi is a restless little maniac who thwarts baby-proofing efforts and nap schedules, and whose destructive powers sometimes tempt me to call FEMA and ask for some relief workers.

However, she’s our maniac, and what a sweet, intelligent and friendly little maniac she is. This week, she began autonomously saying “cheese” (it was only a matter of time!) and “backpack” (in reference to the beloved purple carrier in which she gleefully rides while I do housework) for a nice, round 30 words by age 1. “Backpack,” being a rather difficult word for a baby, was initially pronounced “dackpack” but is now uttered in a more recognizable form. She also says “baseball” and “Kaija” on command (although the former sounds like “ba-ball” and the latter like “tie”). She doesn’t associate those words with anything yet, so we’re not counting them as they are just parroting. It is nice that she’s making an effort, though! One thing she does say is “Bye-bye, baff.” Maddi has bid her bath adieu every night for the past week or so as I carry her from the bathroom. She also says, “Bye-bye, Dada,” “Bye-bye, cat” and “Bye-bye, high-tcha” when prompted. Ever the sport, she tries to repeat, “Bye-bye, baby,” when we leave a mirror, but it comes out sounding like “Bah-bah, bah-bah.” Quite the tongue-twister.

Maddi is working on still more short sentences. Not only has she said things that sound like “Go see Daddy” when clamoring to open her bedroom door and go downstairs, but today she grabbed her favorite book from me as I was reading aloud to her and said what sounded an awful lot like “I gonna wee.”

Maddi still has yet to take her first official steps, but it’s just a matter of time. She walks very proficiently while barely holding onto furniture or a finger. Like Dumbo with his feather, Maddi just needs to know she has something to hold onto to “help” her walk. But very soon, I suspect she’ll figure out she could walk all along.

This month, Maddi began eating turkey stuffing and tomatoes and tomorrow will be reintroduced — again — to rice. I’m sure we introduced some other food but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were. She eats so many things now!

Truly entering her toddler years, Maddi now gets down on the floor after bedtime and nap time and help retrieve her pacifier from wherever she chucked it while in her crib. This began as crazy Mommy talking to herself, asking where Maddi’s suckie could possibly be. Maddi looked at me and then darted under the glider, retrieving her pacifier in two seconds. Now, whether it’s near the bed, under the bed or across the room, Maddi enjoys showing me where her suckie went. She also drops dirty clothes in the hamper upon request, although she often feels instant remorse. Lately, she’s also begun to realize that it’s good manners to play with only ONE towel or washcloth while Mommy is folding laundry, rather than running amok through the just-folded sleepers. I plan to enjoy these helpful years while I can!

On days like today, when she helps with laundry and finding her pacifier and says “Bye-bye” to just about everything in the house, it’s mind boggling to think that just a year ago, I was handed a tiny, kittenish newborn with a puffy purple face and nothing on her agenda but eating, pooping, sleeping and having colic fits. Tomorrow, we’ll have nearly a dozen babies running around the house, eating allergen-free cake, frolicking in the play yard and opening loot bags filled with stuffed puppies and Mum-Mum crackers — a scenario I could never have imagined orchestrating a year ago when my only thoughts revolved around how cute this new baby was and when I could get a shower and pee. (OK, my thoughts still revolve around all three of those things, but I’m now cleared to go to the gym and do the latter two!)

Anyway, happy birthday, Maddi! It’s been the most wonderful year ever.

Coming soon: Pictures of the birthday girl during what will be either the best or most awful birthday party ever, depending on how her friends from playgroup hold up!

This week was a big one for Maddi, with a few firsts and the continuation of what I was beginning to worry were lost skills.

Her first milestone occurred at playgroup on Tuesday, when — out of the blue — she stood for a good 30 seconds just playing with a toy. You may recall that in late March, Maddi stood on her own, but unfortunately, she didn’t make a habit of it and indeed, when prodded to stand or walk, would instantaneously lose all muscle tone in her lower body and behave very much like a sack of lead. I was beginning to think that, out of spite for those of us who wish her to perform like a trained monkey, Maddi would live out the rest of her life being conveyed about on my hip. But apparently, after watching several of her friends standing and walking, our wee one finally decided that bipedal mobility was no longer beneath her.

She stands for longer and longer stretches of time, often seemingly unaware of it as she fiddles with toys (and sometimes keenly aware of it as she drops those toys over the play yard onto the unsuspecting cat). Twice she has tried to walk, albeit unsuccessfully. More often, she opts for the old crawl-and-climb, since Maddi is a baby who knows enough to stick with what works well.

As a crawler and climber, Maddi is fearless. Take your eyes off her for two seconds (literally! Two seconds!) and she is clambering onto the hearth — or, as she did at the same playgroup session — up a few stairs, even though she hasn’t been allowed to practice on them at home. She has even been observed inserting a few toes into the diamond-shaped holes in her play yard and attempting to use the tenuous foothold to boost herself over the fence to sweet, glorious freedom. Because a 63-square-foot playyard is not playyard enough for this little girl.

Despite her, er, lively nature, the wee one nearly managed to escape her first year as a rough-and-tumble adventuress with nary a scrape (although plenty a bruise). Alas, a mere week and a half before her first birthday, our intrepid explorer has sustained her first fall.

Groggy from having just woken up and showered, I foolishly put her on the bed for just a second while I pulled a fresh bra from the drawer. Now, according to the literature, babies of this age are cautious after having experienced heights and will not go careening headfirst onto the floor. Unfortunately, Maddi a) is impetuous to say the VERY least and b) has always been watched too closely to have ever experienced a fall that wasn’t directly related to sitting or standing.

No sooner did I open the drawer than I heard an ominous rustling of sheets against hands and knees, quickly followed by a loud “thud.” I whirled around to behold my daughter doing a headstand on the floor and managed to catch a surprised Maddi before her body flopped onto the floor.

While my wee girl was screaming her little heart out (and while I was feeling like the worst mom this side of Britney Spears), I happened to notice another “first” — Maddi’s first chewing tooth. On her lower left jaw, there is what looked like half a bicuspid poking out from some very inflamed gum tissue. Sure enough, it was a tooth — and her upper right canine is thisclose to breaking through, too.

So now I know the reason for Maddi’s bad temper of late. Not that the Tylenol we’re giving her is helping much, but at least there’s a reason that she screams for 30 only seconds when she falls headfirst off a bed but lately fusses endlessly at naptime and bedtime.

As Maddi enters her very last week of babyhood, she’ll be easy to spot. She’s the baby who’s standing on two feet, sporting a big old premolar and a scraped-up countenance.

And here they are — the latest pictures of our 51-week-old girl!

No, she’s not allowed to do this!

Chris and I enjoy most of Maddi’s developmental milestones. Yes, there are a few, such as sticking hands in poopy diapers and opening the central vacuum outlets, that we could do without. But by and large, we are delighted to see our little girl becoming older and more independent.

However, one of her newest phases definitely falls into the “we could do without” category. It used to be that Maddi would register disappointment with a wide-eyed look of wistful bewilderment and perhaps an outstretched arm as we passed by the forbidden object of desire. Lately, that disappointment has been registered far more often with an arched back and an insistent, high-pitched whining sound that is quickly followed by what is known as the “Shriek of Doom.”

After practicing all manner of screaming and shrieking noises over the past several months, Maddi has finally settled on a bloodcurdling, face-reddening, rage-filled shriek next to which all other incredibly loud and irksome noises pale. It is two parts insane Mynah bird and one part angry mountain lion, with a little extra intonation reminiscent of an exorcism thrown in for good measure.

Parents not coming to retrieve one from a nap quickly enough? Diaper change rather than playtime after aforementioned nap? Forbidden from sampling Mom’s soft drink? Barred from climbing up the tub walls and gnawing on the faucet? Time to employ the Shriek of Doom. Even when it gets absolutely no parental response, this horrendous noise is apparently so enjoyable to the shrieker that it takes a good minute of thrashing on the floor and screaming before one even realizes that nobody’s paying any attention to the earsplitting cacophony.

In other news, I’m thinking of renting Maddi out as a babyproofing-efficacy tester. You see, every time we go to playgroup, she finds something to get into even at the most heavily babyproofed homes. Whether it’s finding tiny knicknacks on the third shelf or pulling heating vents from the floor or attempting to gobble up cat food, Maddi seems to get into all the tempting things that the other babies inexplicably leave alone (at least until she teaches them her tricks). Even at our house, where every outlet is plugged, furniture is tethered and wires are hidden behind things, she still manages to hunt down the odd electrical cord, open the central-vac outlets and splash in the water cooler.

Some of her mischief is beyond the scope of even the most imaginative prediction. Yesterday, while I was on the computer, Maddi, two feet away from me in her huge play yard, began laughing uproariously. I turned around to behold our dear daughter tickling the cat’s footpads as the helpless cat squirmed, stuck to the other side of the play yard. Poor Deva, tempted by a toy with which Maddi had taunted her (a break from her usual pursuit of dropping blocks over the play yard onto sleeping felines), had sunk a claw into the plush plaything and gotten her foot stuck — leaving her vulnerable for the affections of Maddi, whose latest hobby is tickling the feet of both humans and, apparently, animals. Let me just say that it was not exactly the idyllic scene we envisioned when Chris purchased that play yard.

On the language front, Maddi learned two new words this week and debuted them both in a 20-minute span. Last night, she said “bath” for the first (confirmable) time when I stripped her down and asked her if she was ready for her bath. Then, while in the bath, she said “duck” a few times in reference to her bath duckie and clapped when I asked her if she said “duck.” Of course it sounded more like “dud,” but she’ll perfect it eventually, just as she did with “cat.” Her new bath-related words bring us to a total of 28 words with a few weeks to go yet before her first birthday.

Coming soon: Pictures of our little air-raid siren at 50 weeks!

Maddi lost one of her dearest friends this past weekend, although she doesn’t know it. Our beloved cat Selkie, who used to lie on the stairway landing with all her fat spread around her like a furry manatee, had rapidly become skin and bones and didn’t have the energy to roam the house as she used to. We were heartbroken to find out Saturday that she had irreversible liver failure — either from cancer or from not eating — and needed to be put down.

As we got in the car to go to the vet and say goodbye to our kitty, who hadn’t responded after two days of IV nutrition, Maddi clapped her hands in excitement, making the situation even sadder than we thought possible. How do you tell a baby that she is about to bid farewell to the best cat a baby could hope to have?

While her sister Deva either scurried from the room or put out a threatening claw when Maddi came near, Selkie was an eternal optimist. Each and every day, Maddi was given a new chance to learn to be gentle. For months, Selkie presented her fur to our rough-and-tumble little one, and for months she was rewarded with blows and fur-tugging. But Selkie soldiered on, purring as she endured what must have been torment at the hands of her little human sister. It’s as if our cat was waiting patiently for the inevitable day when Maddi would not smack her or yank her long hair, but would pet her sweetly. And in the last few weeks, Maddi finally did come around, just as Selkie knew she would. Maddi finally began stroking the cats’ fur gently and controlling her urge to shriek and flap her arms up and down. And then, as if her work was done, Selkie left us.

Maddi’s too young for the memories of her fur sister to linger — we’re not even sure she realizes there’s only one cat now. But Selkie left an indelible mark with her patience and sweet nature, and if it weren’t for her, I’m sure our little one would still be rough with animals.

In other news, Maddi learned three more words this week, for a total of 26. The first word was “yellow,” pronounced “yeddo” (she can also differentiate between objects that are red, yellow and blue, but hasn’t tried to say “red” or “blue” as far as I can tell). She also says “Cheerio,” which sounds more like “Cheew.” The third word is “boob,” uttered just yesterday, and we’re kind of hoping that she’ll go back down to having just 25 words again. Now that she talks so much, it’s time to either wean or start spelling more things out.

Coming soon: Pictures of our newly-gentle, 49-week-old animal lover on Bunny Day.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the final month of Maddi’s first year. Not only does that mean I have but a mere four weeks to plan a party, it also means that we have precious few days to enjoy with our baby before she becomes a toddler. (Hey, she may already be throwing tantrums, constantly saying “no,” and deliberately tormenting the cats to see their reactions, but technically she hasn’t begun toddling yet!)

This month, Maddi cut two more teeth, began eating four new foods, more than doubled her vocabulary, began routinely allowing us to help her “walk,” began climbing onto the sofa, and stood on her own for the very first time. She also celebrated a few less-delightful milestones, such as learning how to unzip zippers, remove pants and sleepers, dig around in her poopy diapers, and drop toys over the wall of her play yard onto sleeping cats. Once this month, I picked her up from the gym’s day care after 90 minutes and her caregiver pointed to a chaotic battlefield of dumped-out toy boxes and displaced furniture in the previously tidy room and told me wearily, “This was all Maddi.” And indeed, the only other child in the room was all of nine weeks old and completely incapable of laying waste to the daycare. A mere few months ago, Maddi just sat there, too, looking wide-eyed at a world full of things she couldn’t reach. Now that she can reach them, it’s everyone else who’s wide-eyed and helpless!

Now that she’s working on walking, I’m hoping it will temporarily slow her down. Currently, Maddi usually crawls about as quickly as an adult’s brisk walk, which — in case you’re not familiar with crawling speeds — is top speed for your more laid-back tot. At her top speed, employed when she is attempting to access wires, electronic equipment, the central vacuum outlet or a tempting hunk of cat hair, Maddi is nearly invisible, her extreme alacrity creating a vortex around her like that surrounding the Tasmanian Devil. In theory, Chris and I should be able to enjoy at least a week of slow toddling before Maddi figures out how to race around at lightning speed on two feet.

For now, however, she’s content to stand for a few seconds at a time. She can get down from a standing position with no support, which makes it all the easier for her to bend down from the edge of her play yard and grab new toys to drop on the cats. As with her couch-climbing skills (also new this month), the cats are predictably unenthusiastic about the fun and games.

This past week, I got to see what a normal baby is like — something I vaguely remembered from my long-distant babysitting days, but I had begun to doubt my recollections and suspect the mothers had tranquilized their children before handing them over to me. For the past 10 months, I’ve wondered what life is like for mothers of wee ones who take long naps and play with their toys. Last week, Maddi had the misfortune of getting her lateral incisors while she had some sort of yucky, snotty flu. Consequently, she took three naps a day (falling asleep within minutes of being put in the crib!) and actually sat down and played with her toys rather than trying to climb up this wall and that gate or stick limbs into the central vacuum outlet or pull things down on herself. I must tell you it was quite bizarre having all that time on my hands, and it would have been quite relaxing had I not been so worried about this shadow of my former baby. Happily, she spent this morning trying to use her ball as a stepping stone to escape the confines of her play yard and then spent much of the afternoon gnawing the paint off her crib rails and somehow wiggling free of half her overalls (yes, overalls!) rather than napping, so I’m glad to say Maddi is feeling like her old, energetic self once again. I can’t help hoping, though, that the next baby will just naturally be a little less energetic.

As much as keeping up with Maddi can wear a person out, one bonus of our active baby is that her energy spills over into the mental sphere. This month, she learned 12 new words — the latest three of which emerged just in the past few days. After months of enjoying a pull-string hippopotamus that speeds around her bathtub and being toweled off afterward with a hooded hippo towel, Maddi has begun saying “hippo” at bath time. At first it sounded as if she was saying “chuppah,” but now she’s got it down to a pretty recognizable pronunciation. I guess it was easier than “bath,” which remains on the suspected but unconfirmed list. We’ve also been working on stacking her little blocks, and our wee one now has been known to come up with such utterances as “blop” and “blob” while playing with her Peek-a-Blocks, and “shtad, shtad” while stacking them. While she hasn’t got the “ck” sound down just yet, I’m very proud to say that Maddi enunciates her Ls quite clearly. At 11 months, our loquacious little lady has a vocabulary of 23 definite words and a number of things we think she might be saying but aren’t sure about (such as “hungry, Dada,” which was used a few days ago in the proper context and fairly clearly, but only once). She also has kept up with her “sentences,” saying things such as “Hi, kittycat,” “Mama, mil(k),” and once, something that sounded an awful lot like “Down-down, see Dada,” said while standing at her bedroom door and banging on it after she heard Daddy downstairs.

In addition to her new words, Maddi finally has begun using the ASL sign for food rather than indiscriminately signing “milk” when she’s hungry. She still signs “milk” most of the time, but when asked if she wants food (accompanied by the appropriate sign) she will usually correct herself.

This month she got four new foods to enjoy — butternut squash, yogurt, blueberries and raspberries. She also was reintroduced uneventfully to green beans, which had previously been the prime suspect in a bad diaper rash. We discontinued most of these foods for the past 10 days when she got another diaper rash, but eventually it became apparent that it was a teething-related rash, probably from the copious drool since she had more redness under her chin. Sure enough, after the teeth poked through, the redness abated even as she dined happily on yogurt and raspberry cereal.

Alas, with her week of teething, our plans to eliminate the early-afternoon nap were foiled. But it is a new week, and with the wee one destroying her crib right now when she should be napping, it is time for a new attempt at scaling back nap times. If she’s tired enough before I put her down, the thinking is that there will be no energy left for her to remove pants or paint.

It’s only happened once and Maddi was even more surprised than I was, but I’m proud to announce that as of March 25, we have an independent stander. One minute, Maddi was pulling herself up on my knees as we sat on the floor, the next she had removed her hands and was standing all by herself, smiling at me. She stood for a good five seconds until my wild applause rattled her concentration and, with a wide-eyed mixture of delight and confusion on her face, our baby toppled over.

Since then she hasn’t done any unsupported standing that lasted more than a second, but she has tried taking steps from one item of furniture to another. Unfortunately, her endeavors have earned her nothing so far but a bruise on the forehead.

She still refuses for the most part to walk with an adult holding her hands, but she does, however, “dance” with me, which is just as good. Even better, really, when you consider the cuteness factor.

In other news, Maddi’s favorite thing to do lately is hide underneath her crib. Because there’s a dust ruffle, it’s like a little fort under there, and for the last several weeks, she’s spent a lot of time crawling underneath the bed and playing with the old Bumbo we keep there. The past week, she’s also been dragging her toys into the “fort” and has annexed the area behind the glider, which I suppose is the equivalent of an outpost. Occasionally, while we are playing on her floor, she will smile at me playfully and then race under the crib to be “captured.” Being a baby, of course, she still labors under the misapprehension that if she can’t see you, you can’t see her. So if you peek under the crib, chances are good that if Maddi sees you coming, she’ll crane her neck so that her face is as high and difficult to see as possible!

This week also marked the very last week of Maddi’s afternoon nap. After weeks of curtain-yanking, sheet-unzipping, pants-removing fun during what was supposed to be her naptime, we have thrown in the towel. Although she is crabby as can be when “naptime” rolls around, I’m now combining the afternoon and early-evening naps into a single 4 p.m. nap. We are still ironing out the kinks — yesterday, Maddi got NO naps — but soon we hope to have naptimes that involve actual sleep rather than the devastation of her sleeping quarters.

This week marks the first in months during which Maddi has learned not a single new word. However, she does have a new game. When asked, she can point to my nose, eyes, mouth and belly button, and she can show you her hands and feet. For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to our wee one yet that she might also have eyes, nose, mouth and belly button — perhaps because she can’t see them. Her understanding of anatomy has made it much easier to dress her, because she understands commands such as “put your arms up” and “put your legs down.”

Diaper changes, however, remain a challenge as our wee one has decided that the ultimate good time would consist of removing a poopy diaper and flinging it merrily from her change table. So far, she has managed to move a dirty diaper a few inches, but I fear it is only a matter of time before our persistent princess prevails. Just last night, she managed to plunge a pacifier into her freshly diaper-creamed nethers. And we will not speak of the kicking, scratching and hitting that occur when her attempts to escape the tyranny of the diaper are foiled.

However, as I see it, Maddi’s new ability to stand can only help in her efforts to walk, and when that happens, we’ll be that much closer to the ultimate goal, which is potty training. Sweet, sweet potty training!

Coming soon: Pictures of our 47-week-old stander and non-napper, doing one or the other.

In recent months, Maddi has developed quite a knack for getting into mischief as quick as lightning. At first, it was spying the tiniest piece of lint or cat hair and cramming it in her mouth. Last month, it was climbing anything and everything. Last week it was doorknobs and light switches. But this week, Maddi has taken her impish inclinations to a whole new level.

On Monday, I put Maddi down for her afternoon nap and, as usual, watched her for awhile on our closed-circuit camera. As usual, ignoring her bleary eyes and the fact that she’d been awake for six or seven hours, she monkeyed around in her crib for a good 30 to 45 minutes rather than commencing with the dreaded nap. I watched her racing around trying to fit various body parts through the slats for awhile, and then went on to check email and keep abreast of world news (OK, really I just played “The Sims 2”).

After Maddi’s nap, I went in to fetch my wee one and was stymied to find that, although her crib has already been pulled away from the window (adjacent by about 6 inches when the crib was in its old spot), our little daughter was now frolicking in about four feet of tulle. After I got over my heart attack, I removed the curtains only to discover the mattress pad and half the bottom sheet bunched up underneath the tulle. It seems that zip-top mattresses are not so foolproof after all. The wee one apparently grabbed the zipper pull and unizipped around the top corner and all the way down to the bottom corner before deciding her time was better spent conquering those pesky elastic things that hold mattress pads onto mattresses.

I tucked the pull into the gap between the beginning and end of the zipper after remaking her bed, and wouldn’t you know it, after her next nap, the zipper was again gaping for a good one-quarter of its length.

But lest you presume that zippers are the only thing Maddi has conquered this week, let me assure you that she has been quite busy indeed.

In addition to dismantling bedding, she has also discovered a new thing to do in the hallway. Once upon a time, all we had to worry about was dust-bunny consumption and outlet-fiddling (they’re still prohibited, as just because ours are babyproofed doesn’t mean she won’t encounter exposed electrical outlets elsewhere). This, however, was before Maddi started developing her fine motor skills in earnest. Now that she had mastered switch-flipping and zipper-zipping, our little angel has moved on to vanquish the outlets for the central vacuum. These are quite the challenge for the wee one, as they require some serious finger-wedging and use of the opposable thumb, but Tuesday, while I ran into the bedroom for literally 30 seconds to change my shirt, our darling doll of a daughter managed to pry one of these outlets open (a difficult task even for me!) and stick her chubby little hand in the incredibly filthy hole. After much panicking and scolding and hand-scrubbing, I put Maddi back down in the hallway to grab the diaper bag and head down to the car, and what do you think she did? She went straight for the vacuum outlet again — and has at every opportunity since.

And that’s not all. Last week she discovered that, with enough muscle thrown into the task, she could pull our floor vents out of the floor, which means one more thing to look out for in “babyproofed” rooms.

And yesterday, Maddi’s months of climbing culminated in the most exhilarating ascent of her mountaineering career — the taming of the sofa. Yes, the baby has finally climbed up onto the sofa all by herself, albeit with the cushions off. Let me just tell you that the cats were absolutely delighted by this development. As Maddi stood proudly at Camp I and headed for the summit, Deva registered her appreciation by baring her claws and Selkie celebrated by bolting from the room.

The first time Maddi made the ascent, it took her about five minutes of grunting and leg-flailing. Her second trek was completed in a mere 30 seconds or so, with our daughter giddily jabbering “Up, up, up!” all the while. Her third climb, with Daddy observing, took six seconds flat.

Who knows what will be next? She’s been trying to lift herself onto the seat of the glider (of all things!) using her arms as if emerging from a pool, and doing quite well at pulling herself up a bit, so anything is possible!

As always, there’s more news on the word front. Maddi had previously called every form of seating a “hi-ta” (that’s Maddish for “high chair”). This week, after my saying, “Yes, that’s a chair,” whenever this happened, she has begun saying “chair” (or, rather, “tjha”) while pulling herself up on the glider and other adult chairs. She has also begun occasionally using the appropriate sign for “food” rather than using the “milk” sign indiscriminately for all sources of nutrition. And I’m 99 percent sure, based on context, that sometimes when she’s saying things that sound sort of like “dadj” and “ut-dadj,” she’s actually saying “that” and “what’s that?” She just needs to work on her enunciation so we can be sure. So the official count is 20 words now (if you count “chair” and “high chair” as separate words) and possibly quite a few more (we’re still not counting “again,” “I love you,” “bath,” “light,” “that” or “what’s that?” just yet, and even though she said “Isuzu” just as clearly as you please last week, we’re afraid we can’t include that either).

Unfortunately, it seems like she’s been working a little harder on her mischief-making than she is on her talking. For instance, we’re still not sure if she can say “bath” or not, but we know for certain that she can drain the bath because that’s the way about 25 percent of them end these days.

Tune in next week for more tales of tomfoolery.

Coming soon: Pictures of our zipper-manipulating, outlet-opening couch climber! (Update — during her Friday afternoon nap, Maddi somehow managed to completely remove her jeans! And she just did it again for the second day in a row.)

Our little daughter doesn’t seem to go a week without learning a new trick or two, and this past week was no exception. Maddi has been a busy girl, figuring out all kinds of new stuff, from things mechanical to using her toys as tools to a new word or two.

First and foremost, our wee one, who until this week absolutely refused to do any assisted walking outside of rapidly cruising along furniture and walls, and when held up by a parent would make faces and go completely limp rather than take baby steps while holding onto helping hands, has finally decided that a little assisted toddling isn’t such a bad thing. But only, it appears, when Daddy’s around to watch. Although we’re happy with any cooperation we may get, inside we are just a little worried since she can do quite a lot of damage in quite a short time without walking.

But on to even scarier things!

As you may recall, Maddi has an open-door policy and has, of late, been trying to grab doorknobs and open doors if they happen to be closed. This week, realizing that she just was not going to be tall enough to reach that pesky doorknob in a timely manner, our wee one took things into her own hands (and feet). Last Saturday, she dragged her Drop ‘N’ Roar Dinosaur (which, as she still preferred Mommy to put the balls in the chutes, was of little use anyway) over to the door and then proceeded to climb up it. Unluckily for her, but luckily for the rest of the household, the toy was a bit too slippery and she was unable to make it atop Dino and reach the doorknob. But, much like the door-opening velociraptors in Jurassic Park, she’s tenacious and she’s (cue scary music) getting smarter. Pretty soon she’ll be opening those doors and terrorizing our kitchen.

Speaking of the dinosaur, as of today she’s finally putting the balls in the chutes. I’m not sure what took her so long, but if she’s in the mood, she’ll do it on command now. Mostly, though, she still uses the dinosaur as a makeshift walker, pushing it around her room as she gleefully walks upright. There’s a good 10 minutes a day when Maddi will actually play with her toys, but most of the time she’s too busy testing boundaries and trying to climb everything in sight.

One thing she will play with consistently, however, is a light switch. Every time we leave or enter a room, Maddi twists around to find the light switch and play with it. In fact, she’s gotten pretty proficient at turning lights off, although turning them on seems to be a little more tricky.

Back when we first brought her home, Maddi used to love staring at the lights — so much so that Chris and I worried that our little daughter would damage her eyes. She forgot about them for a few months while discovering her hands, feet and other toys, but she’s reconnected with her old “flame” and once more gazes up in adoration when I turn the light on. In fact, I’m almost sure she said “liyh” yesterday — but not quite enough to deem it an actual word. However, she knows what it means, because when we read “Goodnight Moon” she now points to the lamp when I say, “goodnight, light.”

On a related note, Maddi’s been making more progress on the word front. This week, she started saying “down” (although the couple years I lived in Pittsburgh must have rubbed off, because she pronounces it “dahn”), she’s said “moo” twice in reference to her “Goodnight Moon” book, she’s begun calling “Nana” by her name, and there was also a possible instance of Maddi saying “bath” as she was being carried to the tub (but the water was running loudly and we will never know for sure!). You may recall that last week I said she was due for an animal-related word. Well, it’s not technically a word so much as an animal sound, but Maddi now says “Meow.” If she’s in a good mood and I ask her what the cat says, she says, in the sweetest high-pitched voice, “Maaaw.”

So, if you count “meow” (it’s in Webster’s as a word, so I am counting it!), Maddi now says 19 words plus a few possibles, and in the past month she’s been steadily building her vocabulary at 2 to 3 words a week.

No word on what she’ll say next, but my money’s on “light.” (And since she’s run out of cat-related words now, I’d say it’s as good a bet as any!)

And here’s a picture of Maddi at 45 weeks:

We’ve long suspected that Maddi might like the cats better than she likes us. The fact that she went out of her way to say her very first word, “cat,” at barely six months, was our first clue, but certainly not our last.

She also has figured out how to call the cats with kissing noises, and has uttered the phrase “Hi, kittycat,” and if she happens to be on the kitchen floor, she’ll go straight for the bag of cat treats and shake it (although she also wants to partake of the kitties’ snacks, so this is really not encouraged). When she’s set down on the floor of her room, more often than not she’ll race on all fours to her little stuffed cat and affectionately butt its head and give its ear a slobbery baby kiss before moving on to her other toys. And while you can forget about her waving hello or ‘bye to humans anymore, she’s always eager to flap an ecstatic hello to any feline friend.

But lately, our little cat fancier has begun to notice other animals, too. First it was birds — for whatever reason, Maddi has taken a liking to her Nana’s attack parrot, Billy. Whenever we pass Billy’s cage and he gives us his usual malevolent once-over and begins chirping unintelligible threats at us, Maddi’s eyes light up at the sight of her feathered fiend. As he hops around on his perch trying to figure out how to fly free and peck our eyes out, Maddi giggles with glee. She has a few stuffed birds in her room, on which she lavishes her usual toothy attentions. When she bites their heads, instead of telling her to be nice to the birdie, it’s difficult not to think, “Good girl! You never know when that skill might come in handy!”

Maddi has recently discovered dogs, as well. The last few visits, she’s followed Nana’s ancient, longsuffering spaniel around the house, even to the exclusion of the cats. She’s also begun gazing intently at the dogs in her books, and about a month ago at the chiropractor’s office, we noticed that Maddi was staring over our heads. Lo and behold, high atop a cabinet was a stuffed husky dog. The very next day, we were off to Toys ‘R’ Us to get her kittie a little canine companion.

The cutest manifestation of our little animal lover’s affection for things furry and feathered is her delight in mice. The week she was born, a public health nurse came out to our house to weigh our new baby, answer questions, and shower us with educational books and pamphlets on everything from colic to vaccinations to sibling rivalry. Along with all the information, they gave Maddi her very first book, courtesy of the Friends of the Library. The soothing cadence of “Busy Little Mouse” soon became the only thing that would soothe our wailing baby absent the presence of food. She still will sit still far longer for this book for any other, save her beloved “Goodnight Moon.”

She got “Goodnight Moon” in September and it quickly became a favorite. It’s not hard to see why, when you watch how intently she focuses on the cow, the bears, the kittens and the little mouse. Two times out of three, when I ask her to pick out her bedtime story, it’s “Goodnight Moon.” And this past week, when we get to the page that reads “Goodnight, little house, and goodnight, mouse,” Maddi has begun leaning over the book, pointing at the mouse excitedly and giving the little rodent a sloppy, open-mouth kiss. Occasionally, after she does this, she will try to catapult herself over the side of the glider to fetch “Busy Little Mouse” in the most serious manner imaginable, almost as if she’s researching mice.

She hasn’t said “bird” or “mouse” just yet, but this past week she has started saying “high chair” (“hi-ta”), “Nana” and “milk” (that’s “mil” in Maddish) — the latter two being confirmed by people other than crazy Mommy. That’s a grand total of 15 words so far — not too shabby we daresay! I’m sure she’s due for a new animal-related word anytime now.

Coming soon: Pictures of our little animal lover at 44 weeks.