Mamakaze

Maddi turned 10 months old today, meaning Chris and I have but a scant two months left to enjoy our little girl’s first year of life (and plan a birthday party befitting our wee one).

Maddi has had quite a busy month, adding four new foods to her diet, sprouting two more teeth, expanding her vocabulary almost exponentially, perfecting climbing and commencing cruising, and becoming more independent and assertive by the day. She’s grown 10 ounces and three-fourths of an inch, putting her just a few ounces shy of 20 pounds and just over an inch short of 30. At seven months, Maddi was in the 75th percentile for weight and the 50th for height, but she’s burned a lot of baby fat crawling and those numbers have flipflopped. Last month our little princess became longer than she is wide, at 50th for weight and 60th-ish for height, and this month saw the gap widen.

Now one would think that it is normal for babies to fall into different percentiles when they begin crawling, climbing and cruising, but consider this: most babies at her age are at the very least crawling, which would be reflected accordingly in the percentiles. But I have an explanation for this, backed up by the employees at the gym’s day care and the mothers of Maddi’s victims little friends in playgroup: Maddi is a very. Active. Baby. Oh yes! Turn your head for a second and she is not only across the room, but has climbed up the bookshelf and overturned several bins of toys.

While the other babies at the gym sit around contentedly playing with toys and munching on snacks, Maddi will grab a handful of Cheerios, crawl off, and eat them while she’s climbing the furniture and cruising from chair to chair. The general consensus is that she is a sweet and wonderful baby who just happens to be part tasmanian devil. She’s never content to sit and watch anything. Maddi must be an active participant. It’s go, go, go, 24/7 for this one. In fact, there are days when she’s up at 6 a.m. and doesn’t get any sleep until 8:30 at night or later. More days than a person might imagine, really. And since she won’t tolerate a playpen or activity center for more than a few minutes, most of these 14-odd hours are spent racing around the house and climbing various items of furniture. Is it any wonder why she’s thinned out so much?

Not that she’s not eating. This month, Maddi began dining on squash, egg yolk, cheese and beef (hmm, all together like that, it sounds like a pretty yummy quiche!). In addition to her beloved Cheerios and diced bananas, things she gets to occasionally eat by herself include bits of mozzarella, peas, small chunks of soft bread and, this past Sunday, little pieces of a pancake at Nana’s. So far, the hands-down favorite is cheese. No surprise there, since Chris and I certainly eat enough of it. Luckily, unlike last month’s rice and broccoli incidents, we got through this month’s introductions without any allergies to or hatred of the new food.

Our wee one’s new incisors are all the better to eat with. The sound of crunching Cheerios now resounds through our kitchen, and Maddi has discovered the joy of biting (and the agony of being scolded in gleeful mid-chomp). She now eats Cheerios about five at a time and gobbles up cheese as quickly as she gets it. As we suspected, once the long-suffering gums finally gave out, her teeth came in and looked enormous overnight. I still do a double-take every time I see our darling daughter’s no-longer-gummy grin.

Last month, I could list about four words Maddi said regularly. This month, in addition to “cat,” “Mama,” “Dada” and “more,” we have “kittycat,” “hi,” “ball,” “book,” “up,” “dog,” and her personal favorite, “no,” for a grand total of 11 words our wee one uses consistently, plus one instance of “bye-bye” and the ASL sign for milk. She’s put two words together on multiple occasions, saying things such as “Hi, kittycat,” “Hi, Dada,” and “Hi, Mama,” more times than I can count, screaming “No, no, Mama,” virtually every time I try to suction her nose or wipe her bottom, and uttering the phrases “Mama book” and “Bye-bye, Dada” once each. One of these days, her words may even be intelligible by someone other than crazy Mommy.

Intellectually, other than all her various words, she’s working hard at figuring out the world. She knows, for the most part, how to open the baby gate, if only she were tall enough. I attribute this mainly to my hubris in saying she’d take at least six months to work out how the gate is operated. Her knowledge of things that open and close is not limited to the gate. If the door to her room is almost shut, but not latched, Maddi will grasp the edge with her fingers, pull it out a few inches, and then swing it open and scramble out into the hallway. If the door happens to be latched, she will actually pull herself up and reach for the handle, apparently hoping each time that she has grown the required 6 inches or so needed to actually grasp and turn said handle. If she is being carried and happens to be near a door handle, she will actually attempt to operate it.

Maddi began this month to make kissing noises to call the cats to her, although it hasn’t worked yet because she’s still having trouble with the concept of “If you hit them and pull their fur, they won’t want to play with you anymore.” She also knows how to spin the turntable on her Roll-Arounds turtle without using the lever — which, I suppose, is so very two months ago. She simply gives the floor of the turtle toy a flip of her finger (very coordinated, we think, for a wee thing) and off it goes. Our daughter has figured out how to unsnap and remove her bib when she’s finished with her meal — and understands that it stays on while she’s eating. Unfortunately, she’s also figured out how to remove her clothing and has been caught more than once in her crib with either her upper body or lower body completely out of her unsnapped jammies. Clearly, somebody got her daddy’s personal thermostat!

It’s been a busy month, all right — not just for Maddi, but for everyone who watches her.

And here’s a shot of our 10-month-old tornado!

When I was pregnant, if I’d been asked to imagine my baby at 10 months, I might have foreseen her saying a few words. I might even have envisioned her cruising around on furniture. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a baby who was not only talking and climbing, but whose favorite words were rapidly becoming an angry “Nah nah nuh!” and whose latest physical skills included hitting and deliberately yanking hair. Those are things most moms imagine encountering when their babies are two, or maybe 18 months.

Alas, babyhood has come and gone for Maddi. Oh, she is still a sweet little thing most of the time, but mobility has given her some grand ideas regarding her autonomy and, apparently, her place in the family hierarchy. And woe is me, for I discovered all too late that the idea of “terrible twos” is a BIG FAT LIE! Apparently, toddlerhood begins a bit earlier in some respects.

In addition to her many words, Maddi has a choice form of nonverbal communication to indicate that she would like more food. Is it, you ask, the ASL sign for “more” which her mommy has been using faithfully for months? Why no, dear reader, it is not. How funny you should ask. Apparently our dear daughter has decided to improve upon centuries of sign language by introducing a new sign, which is made by banging angrily on one’s high chair and (on the off chance that the sign’s recipient is a hearing person) screeching like an enraged little monkey.

In fairness, I haven’t taught our little princess any signs for “I would like to get out of this backpack now if you aren’t going to be moving around, O Mother most beloved.” However, I am not particularly fond of her way of communicating this sentiment either, as it usually consists of her grabbing handsful of hair and pulling hard on the “reins” while kicking my back. All I need to hear is a “giddyap” to know that our wee one considers me nothing more than a dumb beast of burden which must be beaten to perform tasks satisfactorily. Oddly, none of the words in the sentence, “We don’t pull hair; pulling hair is not nice,” seem to be in her vocabulary. Even “No hair, Maddi,” fails in its efficacy if our little charioteer has, say, missed a nap.

Then there is the hitting. In previous months, Maddi expressed her displeasure by crying, but she has recently discovered that hitting is a “no-no.” Perhaps she has also noticed (after months of injuring herself with them) that hands make nifty weapons. Whatever the reason, Maddi has begun smacking me when I try to change her diaper, put her in the crib, detach the beloved bright-purple nasal aspirator from her iron grip, or do anything else to annoy or irk the little princess. Half the time, when I tell her that hitting is a no-no, she hits me some more or yanks the nearest clump of hair.

Having realized at some point recently that “no” might be negotiable — and apparently hoping desperately to make it so — Maddi now will crawl up to forbidden electrical cords and then look at me while slowly putting out a hand as if to touch them. Only, of course, to quickly retract the hand when confronted by a firm “No” and find something else to do, as if she’d never planned on playing with wires in the first place. She’s a crafty one!

And we haven’t even gotten to the biting. Ah, the biting! Last week, when her top teeth came in, she clamped down on my hand while I was washing her little pearly whites. I told her, “No biting,” but instead of filing it away under “Things not to do to Mommy, for any reason,” our silly girl mistakenly filed it under “Tricks to remember when playing with Mommy.” Thus, three times this week, Maddi has found my bare wrist while climbing the Mommy Gym and chomped down. Three times she has been told, “No biting.” We shall see if this trick makes it into her repertoire of diaper-change aversion tactics.

With Maddi’s magnetic attraction to anything forbidden, and with all the things she’s told not to do, it’s no surprise that she loves to yell, “No!” She hasn’t quite figured it out yet, though. She says it at the right times, such as during diaper changes and when I’m removing naughty objects from her grasping hands or pulling her out of the bath, but she also says it after I’ve put her down for a nap and left the room or when I’m stirring up food for her instead of paying her the kind of constant, direct attention she’d prefer. Even though she uses it for broader protests than its intended meaning, she’s got the general idea of “No” as an objection to having someone’s will imposed on her.

Of course, Maddi’s transition from babyhood to near-toddlerhood isn’t without its benefits. When she sees me lying on the floor of her bedroom, she crawls over and gives me sweet, sloppy baby kisses. She stands at the top of the stairs calling for Dada, and she brings me books to read to her and occasionally includes the word “Mama” in her soliloquies about kittycats. She gives sweet snuggles at bedtime, and often just for the asking. And most of the time when I tell her, “No,” she crawls into my lap for a hug (just to make sure we’re cool) before scrambling off to climb the walls.

Even if someone had told me when I was pregnant that my little one’s babyhood would be all too short — and her toddlerhood, more likely than not, all too long — I still would have been overjoyed to be having such a sweet wee bundle. At the end of the day, fiery temper and all, Maddi is a very well-behaved and loving little girl who I’m sure will quit hitting and biting. Preferably sometime very soon.

And here’s our little toddler-in-training at 43 weeks:

We’ve been saying since Christmastime that Maddi is thisclose to cutting her top teeth. By last week, they were literally full-fledged chompers that just happened to be covered in a thin layer of gum tissue. In fact, many times her bulging, white tooth-shaped gums were too-hastily hailed as actual teeth.

But all things must come to an end eventually, and Chris and I are pleased to inform you that Maddi’s epic teething spell has run its course. (Although now her second incisors are “almost out” — please insert sarcastic air quotes — so it’s not as if she’s really done teething.)

Maddi had one top tooth as of Sunday and two as of Tuesday. As for the next teeth, who knows? Could be tomorrow, could be April!

But one thing Maddi’s not taking forever to do is talk. No, she has figured out that verbal communication is a useful thing and is quickly expanding her repertoire, although she still performs only for Mommy. Maybe, as rumor has it, I’m crazy. Or perhaps spending about 80 hours of one-on-one time with her a week has given me a unique ability to key into what she is saying long before it is intelligible to anyone else. Just throwing out a theory there to those of you who doubt that we have the most perfect, certified-genius Renaissance baby that ever was.

My criteria for a “word” (as opposed to something that could possibly be a word) are that it sounds ever-so-vaguely like a word, and that the word it sounds like is applicable to the thing she seems to be “talking” about, and that the “word” is used repeatedly in the same circumstances and not often in others. I don’t require the word to be particularly well-enunciated or even intelligible to anyone else, just that it be consistently used to convey a specific idea.

But let’s take this a step further. The Catholic church requires that miracles be verified before they are acknowledged. So I’m not averse to having her vocabulary ratified by other knowledgeable sources, such as Chris, his mom and Cora, the gym’s childcare provider who watches Maddi for an hour and a half every day.

Words Maddi definitely says are “Mama” (verified unanimously), “Dada” (verified unanimously and often), “no” (said, or more often screeched, like “Nee-nee-nee!” or “Nah-nah-nah!”), and of course “cat,” which has gone through many permutations beginning with “kkk …. hact” and currently sounding like “cat” or “hat.” So technically, she has four words that she uses consistently.

But then there are also words such as “hi,” which Nana and Cora think they may have heard a few times and which I’ve heard many times (including her following the greeting with “kittycat”). Then there’s “kitty” or “kittycat” which I hear constantly, whether in reference to her stuffed cat or the real thing, and which Auntie Kathy may have heard around Christmastime (except it sounds more like “kit-kit” or “gikky” or “key-caa”). So that’s another two dubiously verified words, which gives us a total of six if we slacken our standards.

Then there are the words which Maddi has never yet performed publicly and, according to some, may exist only in my mind.

Those words would be “more” (or, as Maddi puts it, “mo”), “ball” (that’s “bah” in Maddish), “dog” (which sounds like “dah”), and “up,” which sounds just like it should, except she almost always says it in threes when she’s asking me to pick her up, so I didn’t realize for weeks that she wasn’t just babbling. So if you go by the most unreliable method of verification and accept all your information from a single, emotionally invested eyewitness, Maddi has 10 words that she uses regularly (I’m not even counting the possible instances of “again,” “eat” and “banana,” so you should be proud of me!).

However, don’t expect to hear most of them anytime soon. Being a sociable little girl, Maddi is way too busy smiling and flapping for fresh audiences to start thinking about kittycats or balls, and she’s usually trying to get down rather than up when she’s around her doting friends and relatives.

Her teeth, though, you can see for yourself in this picture of our adorable 42-week-old (alleged) chatterbox. Scroll down for additional cuteness.

* * * Breaking news update * * *

I completely forgot that Maddi occasionally says the word “book.” In fact, the very night I posted this, Maddi said “Mama boo” in reference to the book “I Love My Mommy Because….” And then this morning (March 1), Chris went downstairs and closed the door to the office. Maddi started to fuss a little, and I told her Daddy went bye-bye, and little Maddi stood at the baby gate, flapping a belated adieu and shouting “Bahbah, dada!” So “Hi, kittycat” was not a fluke after all. Our daughter is putting words together.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

Did you know you are, right now, basking in the virtual glow of the world’s tiniest celebrity?

Most parents of new babies hear the words, “Oh, she’s so cute,” or “What beautiful eyes he has” at least once a day. But I suspect that not too many babies have their own enormous fan clubs with chapters practically everywhere. (If they do, don’t tell us! We like to think our baby is special!)

For her fans who live far away, the wee one has her website. And her photo gallery has thousands of views. We’re not really sure how many thousand because it’s connected to a bigger gallery, but I’d say well over half of that gallery’s 49,564 hits (since May 1) are from Maddi fans.

She’s not without fans nearby, either. In addition to her doting family and extended family, who really are required to adore her, Maddi has a group of admirers at the health unit where we go to weigh her each month, supporters at local business establishments we frequent, and even some moms in playgroup who have admitted to me that she is indeed the cutest baby in the world.

Maddi’s biggest fan base by far is at the gym where I work out. For an hour and a half each day, she is spoiled rotten by the women who do child-minding there. As we walk in, Cora and Evelina pull out Maddi’s favorite piano especially for her! And if there aren’t other kids in the child-minding room, she gets toted around the fitness center, where yet more gym employees lavish their affections on our wee celebri-cutie.

A few months back, I discovered that the picture the gym’s electronic system brings up when I scan in was changed. Instead of my mug shot, a photo of our darling daughter comes up on the screen and alerts her fan base to our little VIP’s arrival. And when I brought her in today, the people at the front desk joked, “Oh, just leave her here with us; we’ll play with her.”

Because (and not to brag or anything) we have the most inquisitive, friendly and amusing little baby there is. We’re not conceited, just stating a fact! She is pure sunshine, concentrated into a wiggly ball of fat and set loose on Earth to clamber her way into people’s hearts.

When we’re out, we really can’t go five steps without another person coming up and saying, “I’m sure you get this all the time, but your baby is the cutest thing we’ve ever seen.” Really, it could go to a baby’s head! But so far, despite the VIP treatment and requests for handshakes, Maddi is still as down-to-earth as she was before her rise to fame (which coincided with her increase in cuteness around two months old). She not only takes the time to chill with her fans, she even seeks people out, making eye contact and showing off those gorgeous pearly whites before she’s even approached. No sunglasses and bodyguards for this little star!

Of course there are a few things every starlet requires of her entourage, and Maddi is no exception. She likes her food — whatever is on the menu — to be served with a generous side of Cheerios so that she may alternate mouthfuls. And she specifically asks that a box of toys be placed just outside her crib so she can reach in when she wakes up and grab a plaything or two (or five). And, I hate to say it, but she has even been known to grab a camera or two.

Her people, however, immediately released a statement saying, “It was just a joke. Maddi was playfully hugging the camerawoman and her actions were misconstrued. Maddi has the utmost respect for the mamarazzi.”

Would this face lie?

It took a few weeks, but Chris has finally witnessed the incredible “dada”-saying baby. Up until yesterday, she had said it sporadically but in a way that only a mother could understand. For whatever reason, our little daughter was having trouble spitting out her “D” sound, and so where I heard “Dada,” everyone else heard “Jha-jha” or “Rra-rra” (but a keen observer would have noticed this sound was only used around Daddy and cut that poor child some slack!).

However, in the interest of proving to Chris that I was not crazy, during one of Maddi’s “Jha-jha”-ing sessions, I looked her in the face and said, “That’s right, Maddi — Dada!” with the crispest “D”s possible. After about 10 minutes of making a fool of myself trying to get the baby to say an unequivocal “Dada” — which happens on a near-daily basis — something apparently clicked.

It wasn’t clear at first and sometimes she’d slip back into “Jha-jha,” but Maddi finally got her “D”s working well enough to divert a shocked Daddy’s attention from his business call. Now that she’s mastered this most jhifficult of consonants, our daughter has been hard at work making sure she hasn’t forgotten how to say “Dada.”

Unlike “Mama,” which she uses primarily as a form of protestation when placed in the crib or on the change table (and a few days ago, a “Mama, nee-nee-nee!” when I was suctioning her nose, which I think clearly places “No” in the “definite” category for Maddi’s vocabulary), Maddi can’t use her latest word enough. She uses it to get Chris’ attention in the car, chants it gleefully as she scrambles down the hallway toward the baby gate at the top of the stairs that lead down to Chris’ office, and sings it merrily as she bangs her toys together, as if to keep her skills sharp.

As dismayed as I may be that my name is used only in times of dire need while our little daughter chant’s “Dada” like a fan a rock concert, I am happy that she is using at least one of our names on a consistent basis rather than simply sticking with cat-related vocabulary. Speaking of cats, I have finally discovered what would happen to our feline family members were Maddi ever to get within a few inches of them unsupervised. When she sees her stuffed kitten (a plaything she recently picked out for herself at Toys ‘R’ Us), her typical greeting entails grabbing it around the neck, shaking it up and down and slobbering on its ear. (Yes, she kisses the cat; no, she hasn’t kissed a human yet — ever — and not for lack of effort on my part!) Yesterday, she gave the poor animal her usual affectionate greeting and then finished off by shaking poor little Suzy-Cat upside-down by the tail. Luckily for all, our cats don’t stick around long enough to let her lavish these affections on them.

Despite her propensity toward stuffed-animal cruelty, our now crisply-enunciating daughter is a baby worthy of applause. And as of yesterday, Maddi is able to give herself a big hand. Doing things in twos as usual, Maddi clapped for the first time about two or three hours after the “Dada” explosion. I was giving her a round of applause for some fine “Dada”-ing when I noticed she was putting her hands together and staring at them. I slowed my clapping and said “Clap hands!” and Maddi broke out in a huge smile. Then she flailed her arms in a spastic frenzy that looked a lot more like a drunken cowboy dramatically brushing the dust from his hands after winning a fistfight. I’m not sure that anyone else believes she’s clapping her hands, but I believe it and she believes it and she’s replicated it a half-dozen times since, so it’s going in the baby book!

Coming soon: Pictures of Daddy’s little girl at 40 weeks (finally longer out that in!).

On Monday, Maddi finished her ninth month having cranked out several accomplishments over the past 31 days. She’s perfected her crawl and is moving ever closer to taking her first steps; she’s expanded her vocabulary (although she still doesn’t speak on command, or when there’s a big audience); and she’s begun to realize that not only are she and Mommy entirely different people, but they also have entirely different desires — and Maddi is testing out ways to exert her agenda rather than be influenced by those of others.

Of course, it hasn’t all been progress. Remember when, a full month ago, I said Maddi was on the verge of cutting one of her top incisors? Well, that still hasn’t happened. Chris and I are continually amazed at how far one little strip of gum tissue can stretch. We swear, though, that the tooth will erupt sometime this month.

On the mouth-related front, Maddi (as always) started several foods this month. Our little girl is now eating broccoli (which prompted her very first use of sign language when the frantic sign for “milk” was employed between spits and gags), as well as oats, chickpeas and — once again — rice. Which once again gave her a rash, though she continues to eat wheat with no consequence.

When she was a wee tender thing of seven months, we tried finger foods per her baby-food manual, to poor reviews. Our little daughter, once so eager to swipe food from our hands, had become accustomed to being spoon-fed by accommodating parents. However, now that she is bigger — and consequently, has a bigger mouth and a quicker swallow — she has grown impatient with these laggardly handservants. Maddi has finally discovered the mantra, “If you want it done correctly, do it yourself.” Thus, she has finally allowed us to supply her with such delicacies as Cheerios and diced banana tidbits, which she crams in her mouth while I am preparing her food. Of course, her love of toasted oat cereal facilitates longer outings, too, which is a good thing for everyone involved.

Maddi has gone from “sort of” crawling to closely resembling a greased pig racing through the house. Only this greased pig pulls up on things and cruises, and has managed to open drawers and remove their contents, pull up on her laundry basket and fling things hither and yon, and stand casually rummaging through the basket on top of the bin at the foot of her crib and smacking the buttons on her little CD player so she can listen to “25 Classical Favorites” all the livelong day. Maddi no longer needs both hands to stand against furniture, so now everything must not only be off the floor, but about 5 feet off the floor or her roving fingers will discover and destroy. She has also figured out that there are many fun things downstairs and the baby gate is the one obstacle in the way of pulling the kitties’ fur and playing with Daddy’s many shiny remotes. Thus, she races down the hallway, pulls herself up on the baby gate at warp speed, and proceeds to fiddle with the part where she knows it opens. Luckily, Chris bought a baby gate that is capable of containing Houdini himself, so I give her at least another six months before she can unlatch her prison bars.

Not only does she pull up on the crib, climb the glider and attempt to scale the gate; all Maddi needs to get herself upright is a wall. That’s right — our daughter is literally climbing the walls. She simply crawls over to the wall, places her hands against it, and pushes up on her legs until she is standing.

All this physical activity has not come without a toll. Maddi went seven months before she got her first bruise, but now it’s hard to keep track of them. She has one big mystery bruise on her forehead that could have come from any one of a number of head-butting incidents (she doesn’t discriminate between people and baby gates — whatever’s in the way must go!), a smaller mystery bruise which I suspect came from one of her favorite toys, and two bruises on her leg from where I grabbed her just as she was about to exit our bed headfirst after I foolishly turned aside to reach for my nursing pillow. Luckily for Maddi, these bruises bother us much more than they do her. She has recently invented a new game in which she deliberately bashes her head into someone else’s and laughs uproariously. If you want to initiate it, simply say “Bump heads!” and Maddi will delightedly comply. (More often than not, though, she will “surprise” you with this most exciting diversion when you least expect it. The babies in our playgroup are not appreciative.)

As Paleolithic as her favorite game may seem, her sense of play is not entirely without sophistication. On the seventh, Maddi was playing with one of her favorite “toys,” an empty bottle of ginger ale, when she suddenly removed it from her mouth and offered it to her teddy bear. When I asked her to, she also shared her drink with her toy kitten. However, her generosity stops at humans. When I ask for a drink, she simply looks at me as if to say, “Maybe I’d give you some if you were more generous with your food and drink.”

Maddi has very eloquent facial expressions to be sure, but she’s working on a vocabulary to match. I know that she understands a lot of what we say because she follows all sorts of commands now. “Come here,” “Go get your ball,” and various forms of “No” in combination with the names of the object she’s being told not to touch, pull or climb on are all met with quick compliance (well, 80 percent of the time). Invitations to play, like “Bump heads” or “Where’s Maddi?” are eagerly accepted without so much as a slight physical cue. The mere suggestion of Daddy, Cheerios or a ride in the backpack are enough to drive Maddi into paroxysms of flapping glee. And if she thinks she’s going into her bedroom for a nap, the verbal reassurance that it’s just a diaper change swiftly quiets the inevitable earsplitting tantrum.

Words she has said include — in chronological order — “cat,” “mama,” “dad” and “mo” (“more”). Words she may be saying include “hi” (a suspected, but never verified, part of her vocabulary for months now) and “no” (pronounced “Nee-nee-nee” when we disagree over whether it is time for her diaper to be put on, or time to crawl) and “kitty,” which — if it actually is being said — is only said in reference to cats. Of course, it sounds like “giggy” or “gikky,” so it is still up for debate. Things she probably hasn’t said, but which sounded awfully convincing, are “Again” (uttered so “clearly” during a tickle that both Chris and I thought that’s what she said) and “I love you,” which she pronounces “Ah-lah-loo” and doesn’t even look at me while uttering, but which I choose to assume is her profession of adoration for her dear mama.

And if you choose to believe Maddi’s lunatic mother, she has already possibly uttered her first sentence — cat related, of course, in true Maddi form. It doesn’t sound much like “Hi, kittycat” … until you notice that she only says it when she has just noticed a cat.

Unfortunately, thanks to the child-minding service at the gym, she has enjoyed another (not so exciting) first. I picked her up one day last week and was cheerfully informed, “She was such a great baby. She just sat there the whole time watching ‘Teletubbies’ and smiling.” Yes, despite my best efforts, Maddi has been introduced to television — and horrid children’s programming at that! Given her fixation with the remote, I should have known it would be but a matter of time. Be that as it may, there will still be no Teletubbies in our house — nor any other cheerful animated or costumed characters dancing across the screen as the wee one vegetates happily.

And now, for your viewing enjoyment, pictures of our cruising, talking, tantrum-throwing, Cheerio-snarfing nine-month-old TV junkie:

Maddi laughs in the face of our attempts to keep things out of her reach by stacking them atop bins.

Toys aren’t toys — they’re things to climb on so you can reach the really good stuff.

Now this is what I call a toy!

For months and months, our little girl was the same baby. She had the same skills, the same habits and the same mannerisms. She didn’t really develop a lot of new tricks over several months’ time, and I guess we assumed that she would stay that way forever. Over the past few weeks, however, Maddi has gone from being a calm, quiet baby who sat around playing and went down for occasional naps to a mercurial, jabbering baby who crawls and climbs and screams bloody murder as soon as she sees me going for the light switch.

In the past week or so, Maddi has decided that, since she can crawl and climb, it is she — not we — who should be deciding what she does and when she does it. If, say, I arrive at the top of the stairs around dinnertime and head right (toward her room) rather than left (into the kitchen), she immediately swings her body around and begins desperately trying to escape my arms and crawl there herself. When she realizes that I am still holding her and walking, she gently prods, “What is going on here? Are you trying to starve me to DEATH? I distinctly told you I would like to be given Cheerios and a spoon to bang on my tray with.” Of course, her verbal skills being what they are, this is all uttered in a most ear-piercing shriek. Similar conversations are had at nap time (especially nap time), when she wants to feed herself, and when she would prefer floor play over diaper changing (or when she is happily submitting to a diaper change, but only on the condition that she be allowed to suck on her nasal aspirator, and the diaper changer is unaware of this unspoken compact).

One of the most evident ways in which our wee one has grown recently is her mobility. She not only crawls; she races through the hallway like an excited puppy, panting and grinning. An avid explorer, she fancies herself a cross between Sir Edmund Hillary and Elvis Presley during his later years; she climbs — and devours — everything in her path and goes out of her way for those particularly juicy challenges. Her Everest is the glider in her bedroom. For one thing, it glides, so she can never get a good hold on it. For another, I pull her away from it before she can hurt herself. Naturally, this only means she wants it more. Ditto for the sides of the bathtub and empty laundry baskets. On one hand, it is the most wonderful thing to watch her race down the hallway as fast as her chubby thighs can pump. On the other, she is extremely fast and, 90 percent of the time, she has managed to suss out the one thing in the room that is most likely to harm her and is heading right after it at full throttle.

Unfortunately, Maddi has not yet been appraised of the laws of physics and is always shocked beyond words when she falls on her bottom. Worse yet, she tries to head-butt her way through crib bars, heating grates and playgroup pals, having no idea that two objects of matter cannot simultaneously occupy the same space.

Her exploring is not limited to land. Maddi has been going to “swimming classes” for the past several weeks — basically just playgroup in the water, submersions optional. While Chris and I aren’t ready to dunk the baby just yet, our fearless adventuress has no problem trying to dive headlong into the water while we are sitting poolside waiting for the instructor to show up. Today, it was all I could do to keep Maddi from leaping off the edge into the warm pool before her turn. And during tonight’s bath, while I tried to stop her, a slippery and determined Maddi stuck her face directly in the bathwater. The only reason she cried at all was because mean Mommy held her in the recovery position while checking to see if the smiling baby was still breathing (hey, it could happen!).

As for eating things, one night last week I had just finished vacuuming the floor when Chris asked what Maddi had just put in her mouth. Lo and behold, the only piece of cat fur anywhere in the house had made its way into our daughter’s voracious maw a mere five seconds after she hit the floor. She also enjoys chasing down lint, stale cheerios that fall out from the folds of her legs 10 minutes after a high chair session, and any other microscopic minutiae the vacuum cleaner fails to pick up.

With all this scooting around the house, standing up on furniture and her latest trick — pulling up on her playyard and cruising along it while trying to lure passers-by into picking her up — you would think Maddi would be way too busy to polish those verbal skills. But as is her wont, Maddi is doing things in clusters.

Long gone are the days when our little girl uttered nary a babble or a jabber, choosing instead to occasionally blurt out the word “cat” to her favorite members of our household. Now, Maddi can be heard over the monitor at naptime yelling “Mom! Mom! Muh-muh!” And the other evening, as I was putting her down for her nap and she was crying “Muh-muh” to me as I patted her, she realized that I wasn’t going to pick her up and stall naptime with fun and exciting diversions. But she knew someone who she could count on to do just that. In the midst of her tearful “Mama”ing, I swear our little daughter looked accusingly into my eyes and wailed “Dad!”

She also has begun occasionally saying “Mo!” when I’m not shoveling food into her mouth quickly enough for her tastes. I taught her the ASL sign for “more” long ago and expected that would come first, but Maddi’s one and only instance of signing occurred when I was feeding her broccoli for the first time and, between gaggy, spitty mouthfuls, she signed “Milk.” Since then, I have diluted her broccoli with cereal and she hasn’t signed since. But she consistently says “mo” in the high chair. Things she may or may not have also said recently include “ball,” another instance of “Daddy,” some “No-no-no”ing on the diaper change, and a very suspect hearing of “again” while being tickled in her crib (did I mention that thing about stalling bedtime with exciting diversions?).

Now this next one you aren’t going to believe. Not even Chris believes it, even though he should have been able to hear it from the next room but is apparently as deaf as a stone (or maybe I’m as crazy as a loon). I swear on a stack of baby books that our little daughter has said — on multiple occasions — “Hi, kittycat.” Now I’ll grant you that it comes out sounding more like “Hey, giggykaa.” But, as everyone who has listened to an excited toddler tell a story can attest, just because the child needs a translator doesn’t mean she isn’t verbal. Maddi has flapped hello and said “Hi, giggykaa” to her newest stuffed animal about four or five times and a couple of times to her living, breathing co-rulers of the house. She has not, as yet, said “Hi” to anyone else (except possibly Nana), let alone “Hi, giggykaa.” Disbelieve if you will — it’s hard to catch her talking since she’s quieter when lots of people are around, and goodness knows it’s not very clear — but I’m convinced that she’s begun greeting her feline companions.

Needless to say it has been a busy week for all of us, not least Maddi. Crawling, climbing, feeding oneself, asserting one’s autonomy, and practicing talking can wear a baby out. Especially a baby who would rather crawl and head-butt her crib than nap. (Did I mention the day she woke at 6:30 a.m. and didn’t nap until after 5 p.m.? That was interesting.) Maddi is sleeping a good heavy sleep right now, as her next two milestones (maybe?) continue pushing their brutal way through her tender little gums. She’ll be up bright and early tomorrow, ready for another day of racing down hallways, conquering furniture and jabbering at the kitties.

Who knows what will be next?

And here’s a shot of our 39-week-old, the taking of which was no easy feat because of her cheetahlike alacrity:

They say that around the six-month mark, babies develop the ability to consciously manipulate their parents. We’ve been lucky with Maddi up until now, in that she is a happy little girl who is disappointed when things don’t go her way but who doesn’t really do anything about it.

The key words in that last sentence, in case you missed them, are “up until now.”

Now, there have been a few occasions of low-grade fussing when things were taken away from her. (Let me just say right now that the analogy “Like taking candy from a baby” was coined by someone who had very little exposure to infants!) And a week and a half ago, Maddi very nearly cajoled me into buying her a horrible toy with loud noise and flashing lights while we were at Toys ‘R’ Us shopping for another baby’s birthday. When I told her she couldn’t have that, she suggested I purchase an expensive keyboard for ages 3 and up.

This week, Maddi finally figured out that mildly fussing in her crib is a pretty ineffective way of getting parental attention when she doesn’t feel like napping, and that what really gets Mom and Dad running, no matter what, is her pain scream. So this afternoon, Maddi was playing in bed at naptime (her latest sleep-stalling tactic consists of doing pull-ups on her crib), when all of a sudden, ear-shattering screams echoed through the house. I raced into Maddi’s room, certain that she had somehow ejected herself from her crib or trapped a leg in its bars.

As I entered the room, our little daughter looked up from her screaming, beamed a huge smile at me and flapped hello. After checking to make sure all limbs were intact, I patted the dear wee one’s back, bade her farewell and made the slightest motion toward the door. Instantly, the pain scream resumed. I had been duped!

Of course, before I even finished walking down the hall, the nursery fell silent. I’m sure Maddi, as I type this, is dreaming up better ways to stall naptime, just as she has recently figured out that yanking my hair is always an effective way of being freed from her backpack carrier.

Despite her growing capacity for machination, however, Maddi continues to be very sweet-natured and agreeable for the most part. Even when she’s trying to snow us — for instance, she giggles and kicks in a most adorable manner when we’re tucking her in, so as to postpone bedtime — her nascent manipulations tend toward the amusing rather than the aggravating.

And when she pulls my hair out by the root as she thrashes around angrily in the backpack, I just tell myself, “At least she’s finally hit that social milestone.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

In other news, Maddi has tired of crawling and has instead begun pulling up and climbing. She can now crawl over toys, people and laundry and has pulled up on her crib, dresser drawers, the baby gate, storage bins, laundry baskets and the bathtub. Maddi has also tried unsuccessfully to pull up via my hair, a closet door and a gliding ottoman (hence the big bruise on her forehead this week). She still does a little shaky-kneed hula when she’s standing, but I predict that will be worked out in the next few weeks. Maddi is ready to conquer the world!

And here’s our 38-week-old Bradley Assault Vehicle preparing for her next mission: busting her way out of Fort Crib.

Once upon a time, I would talk to Maddi all day long, despite the knowledge that she understood absolutely nothing I said to her. Eventually, she started to recognize a few words, most of which were food and comfort related.

But now that she is a big girl of eight and a half months, Maddi is a very savvy young lady. She understands all kinds of things, and during my running narrative, if certain ideas such as “high chair,” “kittycat theatre,” “Daddy” or “bath” come up, she’s flapping and squealing excitedly before we so much as head for the door.

But a few days ago, I discovered that she understood much more than she’d been letting on. As you may recall, Maddi is single-minded in her pursuit of a certain sliver of cardboard wedged in a heating grate to keep the vent open. Despite my admonitions of “No vent!” our darling daughter has been racing as fast as her little hands and knees can carry her to that forbidden prize.

In her repeated forays to the heating grate, Maddi has had ample experience being told “No” and removed from the naughty vent. Yesterday, when she headed toward the vent, I looked at her sternly and asked in my best “suspicious parent” voice, “Maddi, what are you doing?” Our little daughter looked back at me with big, guilty eyes. Then she motored for the grate with the most lightninglike speed a beginning crawler can muster. I scooped her up and placed her on the floor with a toy, but to my dismay, she employed her latest trick: crawling around the opposite side of the glider, wriggling behind it and accessing the grate via that alternate route. I suspect she thinks Mommy doesn’t know what she’s doing when she “sneaks up” on the grate from behind the glider.

“Maddux Elise, what do you think you’re doing?” I said in my best impression of a stern schoolmarm (while laughing on the inside at her pathetic attempt to pull the wool over my eyes). Maddi looked back at me with frightened saucer eyes and a quivery little lip. “The vent is ‘no!’,” I reiterated. “Come to Mommy!”

And wouldn’t you know, our little one turned around (no easy feat when you are wedged behind a glider) and crawled obediently right back to me!

Now, half the time, Maddi will look back at me with a hand-in-the-cookie-jar expression and then motor for the vent anyway, but a good portion of the time, she is able to rein in her impulses and crawl back to my arms.

It may have seemed pointless when she was a wee newborn, but my incessant jabbering has finally paid off!

And here they are: Adorable pictures of our 37-week-old!

Here’s Maddi doing something that’s a “no”:

And here she is chasing the cat after pulling its fur (another “no no”):

Even objects that are obviously out of her reach are not immune to her curiosity (we’ll have to find a new place for Mrs. Butterfly!):

And just when all the mischief has started to wear thin on Mommy, she makes her “I’m so adorable you can’t resist me!” face. (And no. I can’t.)

Last summer, it was all about lengthening your legs poolside with a pair of metallic heels. This swimsuit season, the look for legs is softer. Softer and a lot squishier. And did I mention that rolls are going to be big?

Really, really big. Clean-them-out-with-a-Q-Tip big.

Look out, world! Maddi is coming to a swimming pool or beach near you!

After an auspicious start last summer at the Halcyon Hot Springs resort and eight months of practicing in the bathtub, our little fishie has finally made her public-pool debut. This morning at 9:15ish, we loaded up the car and headed to the nearby Johnson-Bentley Aquatic Centre, where our wee one enjoyed a rollicking half-hour of floating, splashing and playing with oversize bath toys. She was a little hesitant at first, but her friend Alex from playgroup was there, and he’s an old hand at this swimming-lesson thing.

He showed her how to play with a beach ball, although it didn’t really sink in, as she wouldn’t get her hands anywhere near the thing and basically tried to pretend it didn’t exist.

Maybe it was a matter of temperature, because once we moved from the graduated pool to the warm tub (not to be confused with the hot tub, which we would never inflict on such a tiny thing!), Maddi perked right up and thoroughly enjoyed Ring-Around-the-Rosy. She didn’t much appreciate having the big yellow ducky taken away from her at the end of class, but then, who among us does give up this season’s “it” accessory without a bit of reluctance?

Anyway, much fun was had at the pool by all. Here’s a picture of our little water baby sporting the hot new chubby-thighed look. (Mommy’s trendy thighs are simply too fabulous in their chubbiness and will blind the undeserving; thus, they have been concealed beneath board shorts so that other people won’t feel insecure about their stringy, scrawny chicken legs.)