Mamakaze

As any new parent will tell you, when you exult in the joys of your sweet and wonderful baby, there is always some kind person who is more than willing to utter these encouraging words: “Well, just wait ’til she starts crawling.”

These are usually the same people who, in the third trimester when you are falling asleep on your feet because you were up all night peeing, slapping your tingling legs awake and enjoying the spirited performance of Riverdance inside your midsection, offer up this oh-so-helpful gem: “Better get your sleep while you can!”

Of course, we all finally discover that while colic, projectile vomiting and babies who never sleep are indeed no picnic, it isn’t as bad as the gloom-and-doom set make it out to be, either. Sure, there are lots of things about babies that put a definite cramp in your lifestyle, not least of which is the fact that you may never wear nice clothes or get more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep again. But one wonders why these people never tell you about the joys of having a sleepy baby snuggle in against your chest, or the excitement you’ll experience when they pass those important milestones, the warmth that will fill your heart when your little one laughs, or that wonderful smell that can be found only in baby hair.

Doomsayers’ somber declarations aside, Chris and I have done our waiting and Maddi has started crawling.

She is, as the expression goes, “into everything.” In a week’s time, we’ve gone from having a baby who could theoretically be left unattended in an unbabyproofed room for an hour and come out unscathed (not that we’ve tested this theory!) to tending a tot who is on a mission to devour every hazardous object in the house and create a big mess doing it.

Her arms and legs aren’t quite coordinated yet, so sometimes her arms will be moving at a half-mile per hour and her legs, attempting to break the 1 mph barrier, will propel her directly onto her face. Conversely, her arms may move faster than her little legs and she will do a bellyflop on the floor, with legs flailing desperately for a foothold. But despite her silly-looking crawl, she’s getting more proficient by the day and has developed several new tricks.

In addition to traveling into the hallway from her bedroom while I check on the bathwater, Maddi has begun making a beeline for the one nonbabyproofed part of her room — a heating grate where we used a tiny strip of cardboard wedged into the adjuster to hold the vent open. Her deepest desire is to remove this chunk of cardboard goodness from the grate and sample its fine, woody flavor.

The cats, perhaps, are the ones most affected by Maddi’s crawling. Over the past several days, they’ve learned that sitting two feet away from the baby — just out of lunging range — is no longer a safe option. Maddi isn’t the fastest crawler, but she is fast enough to surprise an unsuspecting cat who is used to a nonmobile baby. Now, if the cats get close enough, they sit poised to run at a moment’s notice and keep a wary green eye trained on the little fur-grabber.

Her other tricks, however, have actually improved our quality of life — much, I am sure, to the chagrin of the “wait ’til she starts crawling” people (who, I am convinced, hate babies but didn’t discover it until they had one of their own that they couldn’t give back when it pooped or began crying). Before we had a mobile baby, Maddi began to cry each morning at the crack of 7 when she awoke. But now, she doesn’t start fussing until 7:30 or perhaps even 8, when she’s hungry. The reason? Our little genius has discovered that if she crawls to the foot of her crib and snakes out a wee arm, she can snag the box with her small toys and pull it toward the crib.

One morning last week, I heard Maddi fussing and went to her room to pick her up. There sat our baby in her crib, surrounded by about five different playthings. Later in the day, I asked Chris, “Honey, did you put toys in the baby’s crib?” Nope. Our daughter had pulled an assortment of her favorite rattles and teething toys into the crib and amused herself for probably an hour, allowing Mommy to get some much-needed extra shuteye. And in fact, every morning since, she has had at least one toy in her crib by the time I’ve been summoned for her morning meal.

Before we had Maddi, while we were planning her nursery, we ran across these crib sheets that fit around the entire mattress, and you just zip the top on. They make for quick, easy sheet changes and there’s no possible way your baby can get tangled up in sheets that have come off the mattress.

Another bonus to these nifty sheets is one that Maddi’s discovered. Twice, we have discovered the sheet partially unzipped at the top. I don’t know about Nana, but the time I zipped it back up, the zipper pull was covered in slobber. Apparently, Maddi is working on her unzipping skills at the same time she’s amusing herself in her crib.

She’s no longer a lap baby, either. Maddi won’t be content until she gets onto the floor and crawls around. If the person holding her doesn’t get the hint when Maddi stares at something on the ground, our wee one will then do her best impersonation of a freshly-caught sturgeon until she tires her holder out or is carried from the room, protesting all the while.

Sure, things are a little more difficult in some ways now that Maddi is mobile. Although we’re no longer on “fetching duty” for toys out of her reach, we’ve got to watch her like a hawk, and plopping her down in one part of a room if there’s anything unbabyproofed somewhere else in the room simply isn’t an option, because babies apparently have a special kind of radar.

But as for regrets, we are sorry to announce to those who make ominous pronouncements regarding how much we’ll enjoy (or rather, not) our lovely baby once she starts crawling, walking or talking, we are still having a great time with our little one! (We just can’t say the same for the poor cats, is all.)

And here’s a shot of our little one with a bunny poached from her toybox:

Maddi turns both 35 weeks and eight months old today. I know I say this every month, but it’s hard to believe she’s this old. There are still days when I wake up assuming as I always have that I’m footloose and fancy-free, and then remember, “Wow, I have a kid.”

And what a kid she is! This month, Maddi got her first two teeth and is thisclose, I think, to cutting two top incisors. She’s pushing up on all fours and crawling a few shaky steps at a time. She’s also got a very handy new skill — getting back into a sitting position from crawling (or at least trying to crawl). She simply tucks her leg in toward the other and pushes back onto her bottom. Maddi can also pull into a standing position from sitting if she’s got something good to hold onto, such as Mommy’s hands or a Rubbermaid bin. Thankfully, she’s a cautious baby and has not expressed any interest in cruising. Between that and her two-steps-at-a-time crawling, we are probably the only parents of an eight-month-old who haven’t had to babyproof yet.

This month, Maddi began eating all kinds of fun foods: chicken, peas, pears and bananas. She loved chicken and bananas, liked peas, but was not so fond of homemade pears. (Gerber pears apparently passed the taste test, though.) She also had a touch of flu for a few days, which necessitated the early and not-on-schedule introduction of garlic, which went over about as well as the homemade pears. And here we thought we’d never find a food this baby wouldn’t open her mouth for!

In terms of cognitive ability, Maddi figured out this month that when we hide one of her omnipresent Roll-Arounds balls underneath a blanket, it’s still there. She knows what to expect when we cover our faces, and she knows that in her little book, “Where is Baby’s Belly Button?”, the belly button is under Baby’s shirt. The past few days, she’s even taken to covering her face with a blanket and then yanking it down with a gummy grin.

Her vocabulary is expanding as well. While she started babbling in November, it didn’t really pick up until the last week or so of December, when she began to say “ba-ba-ba-ba” while rolling on the floor and “Mama” in the crib and “Dada” in the car. We’re pretty sure “ba-ba-ba-ba” doesn’t mean a thing, and “Mama” and “Dada” are up for debate. But she’s definitely said “cat” a few times and mispronounced it a few dozen. She also understands quite a bit of what we say.

If we ask if she wants food, she flaps and starts yelling “Mmm, mmm, mmm!” If I ask, “Where’s Daddy?” or say, “Look, a cat!” her eyes shoot toward the doorway. If I ask, “Do you want Mama?” nine times out of 10 the little one puts out her chubby arms to be picked up. “Wave bye-bye” is another one she definitely knows, although she often reminds us she’s not too keen on performing like a little circus monkey. Other commands she obeys every time — she figured out several months ago that “No biting” means babies who bite get cut off from their food supply. And this past week, when I say “No pulling hair,” she’s actually begun loosening her grip on my ‘do or the cats’ fur before I have time to start prying the strands from her mitts. And for the past two nights, while drawing her bath, I’ve been able to stave off in advance her usual pleas for me to return to the room by telling Maddi, “Mommy will be right back; it’s time for your bath!”

Last but not least, Maddi has gone from two naps most days to one, which is not as bad as it sounds. When she was a twice-daily napper, each of those naps lasted 30 to 45 minutes — just enough time for me to use the bathroom, eat and run a brush through my hair. Now, our little one often enjoys an hour to 90 minutes of napping at a stretch, meaning I can luxuriate in usable spare time at least once before 8 (provided she takes her nap).

Who knows what the next month will hold? Maddi’s working very hard on all her skills and I’m nearly positive those new teeth are almost here.

On those rare days when I wake up feeling well-rested rather than to the sound of crying, and forget for a groggy minute that I’m an indentured servant to a tiny bald slavedriver, it’s mindblowing to think we’ve had her for eight long months. After all, it doesn’t feel like I’ve done a thing since May. But when we look at how big our daughter’s gotten and how many milestones she’s passed, it’s hard to believe it’s been only eight months. If only adults experienced life as fully as babies do!

Something is missing from Maddi’s room tonight. Her Ocean Wonders Aquarium Cradle-Swing, which earned many times its weight in gold over the six months we’ve used it, has been retired. One day, we hope it will emerge from the storage room to cradle tiny new Phillipses. But for now, it’s gone the way of the dinosaur.

And oddly enough, a dinosaur has taken its place. After Christmas, I realized Maddi had way too many toys to fit in her tiny little room. We had two choices — either give up one of the larger bedrooms to make room for the burgeoning tide of colorful plastic, or jettison a few of her less-used belongings. Since we like our bedroom and office, and her big sister Kaija’s room is full to bursting with 30,000 stuffed animals as it is, I realized that Maddi’s swing — once essential — was now taking up an awful lot of space and is only marginally useful.

Once upon a time, when our little sausage was but a wee 10- or 11-pound cocktail wiener of a baby, she enjoyed hours upon hours of sleep in that swing. And I really do mean hours. About five a day, since she resisted sleeping in her crib once daylight emerged at 7 a.m. After her morning meal, she would sleep in the swing. During her erratic, often nonexistent naps, she was in the swing. And while I showered and dressed and sometimes even washed dishes, she was in the swing.

But now that Maddi is an 18-and-some-change-pound bratwurst, things are different. For one thing, the swing groans beneath her weight. If the batteries are less than fresh, our little sausage isn’t going anywhere. And since she’s started rolling and trying to crawl, Maddi’s not content to just sit and be entertained. She is a baby on the go. Our wee one would much rather flop about in her crib and tire herself out stalking the animals on her mobile than sit strapped in a swing.

I had begun giving her toys and stuffed animals to play with while she fell asleep, but she quickly discovered the joy of flinging them to the ground — perhaps fancying herself a balloonist releasing ballast — and then wailing for assistance. So for awhile now, she has taken her 8-to-11 a.m. nap in the crib, whose bars are too close to allow her rattles and balls to be thrown willy-nilly.

The last straw came this week, when we assembled Maddi’s new Drop ‘N’ Roar Dinosaur. This toy of Jurassic proportion has swallowed up much of Maddi’s room, not counting the 25 bazillion little Roll-Arounds balls that either came with it or other toys or inexplicably purchased separately on different occasions by each parent. (What can we say? There are balls for every possible baby occasion!) These Roll-Arounds are so numerous that they need their own special toybox, and their round shape and omnipresence invariably bring to mind — even to those like me who aren’t fans of the oeuvre — a Star Trek episode titled “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

That, along with her 47,000-odd other Christmas presents, made walking space in Maddi’s room a precious commodity. So last night, as Maddi blissfully flicked the spinning butterfly on her colossal new dinosaur (as yet, she has expressed no interest in its main feature, the ball chutes), I lugged her swing out of the room and moved the crib down the wall to make room for the mindboggling array of plastic.

Maddi didn’t seem to care that she has her floorspace back, but I’m sure in the coming weeks, as she hones those crawling skills, that she will come to appreciate her new, pared-down room.

Perhaps one day, her nursery will once more hold a kitten-tiny newborn and the cradle-swing will return. Until that day, dinosaurs rule the earth.

And here’s Maddi at 35 weeks, enjoying the space freed up in her room as she frolics in the shadow of the big plastic dinosaur (notice that one of her friends has come to visit).

Just when it seemed she had gone awhile without a new trick, we have a baby who is (if you play fast and loose with the word) crawling and possibly talking.

I say this at risk of her not incorporating her latest skills for another month, but this is perhaps the very last week Maddi will get around by rolling. For the last week or so, she’s been getting up on hands and knees and rocking back and forth, and on Friday, she started almost crawling.

I say “almost” because while, technically, what she does is crawl, she doesn’t do it for very long at all. Friday night, she was playing on the floor of her room when she noticed one of her brand-new Christmas toys, a ball with lots of sliding segments that make a great “clack-clack-clack” noise when she shakes it, had rolled beneath the crib a few feet away.

Rather than look at it wistfully for a few seconds, then give up and grab something closer, Maddi pivoted toward the ball and planted her hands in its direction. Then she not only leaned over her tucked-in leg, but then put that knee on the floor along with the other. She crawled one step forward with the first leg, then pushed her knees off the floor so that her bottom was pointed straight to the sky. Then she did kind of a frog-hop, which pulled her legs in toward her hands, pushed off again and handily retrieved her toy!

Proud mama that I am, I had visions of Maddi crawling all about the house in short order. But that was not to be. As you may know, when it comes to things other than food and strangers, Maddi is a cautious baby. Whether it’s a bath or her crib or tummy time or her hat, our little daughter takes a lot of time to acclimatize herself to new things. And so it is with crawling.

Maddi will try to crawl only if something is within two or three feet. Otherwise, she will simply get there via rolling (a method of transportation, you may recall, which not too very long ago was also met with no small measure of reluctance). So far, she hasn’t taken more than one or two little crawl-steps at a time. Only time will tell whether this is yet another skill she will master, but wait months to employ.

Speaking of skills she masters but seldom employs, Maddi has finally uttered — correct pronunciation and all — the word “cat.” As regular readers may recall, she has been trying very persistently to say “cat” since she a little before her six-month birthday. At first it came out sounding a lot like “kkk … hakkt” and to this day, much of the time it sounds like “caa..” or “kit” or even like she’s a cat and is hissing or perhaps conjuring up a hefty hairball.

Unfortunately, I am the only person who has witnessed the two times (that we know of) when Maddi has correctly pronounced “cat,” so I’m pretty sure people are saying I’m completely loony. Auntie Kathy and cousin Becca got to hear Maddi mumbling “kit-kit-kit” last week, and Daddy has heard the ubiquitous “hakkt” several times, but Maddi does her best work when the cats suddenly pop into her bedroom and surprise her. Needless to say, I don’t think anyone really believes she’s said “cat.” But I assure you it is true.

The first time it happened, Maddi was in the hallway and our fat cat, Selkie, was a few feet away. Maddi looked at Selkie, wide-eyed, and whispered in a reverent tone, “cat.” At that point, not even I was sure whether to believe my ears.

But on Friday, the same day she crawled (is it just me, or does Maddi always do things in twos?), she was lying on the floor of her room playing with that same silly ball when Deva, our smaller cat, slinked into the room and gazed at the fat, pink “alpha kitty” suspiciously. Beaming from ear to ear, Maddi looked over at me and said, clear as you please, “cat.” Not “hakkt” or “kit” or “tiktik” or her horrible hissing hairball noise that frightens her beloved kitties away. Nope. “Cat.”

She has also been babbling “Mama” and “Dada” and “Ba-ba-ba-ba,” but who knows whether the “Mama” and “Dada” are intentional? It’s not as clear-cut as when a baby says something difficult like “cat.”

In other cat-related news, I’ve noticed that Maddi has been making funny kissing noises with her mouth. At first I thought she wanted to give Mommy kisses or maybe was trying to tell me, in a rather goldfishy way, that she was hungry, but then I realized those are the same noises I make when I call the kitties over.

“Are you calling the cats?” I asked our little daughter. “Here, kitties, pwa-pwa-pwa!”

Maddi laughed and made more little kissing noises. I am certain that in her dotage, Maddi is going to be one of those old ladies who leaves everything to her 37 cats. She certainly seems to like them better than dear ol’ mom and dad!

And here’s the lastest pic of our crawling, cat-calling 34-week-old.

Who’s fat, jolly and loved the world over? Why, babies, of course!

Nothing is more delightful — or more anticipated — than baby’s first Christmas! The sweet keepsake ornaments! The carefully picked-out presents! The photo opportunities!

It’s potentially a lot of fun for the baby too. The crackly wrapping paper and inviting ribbons! The relatives to charm! Drink glasses and trays of snacks just out of reach! New, unsuspecting cats left completely unattended! It’s enough to keep a baby up four hours past bedtime!

Now between this, and the fact that our little doll both is cutting teeth and has a cold, you would think that this would be a recipe for disaster and that Maddi would have a complete meltdown at Christmastime.

But that is the thinking of the uninitiated. As Maddi’s keepers, Chris and I know that as long as there are people to shower our darling daughter with attention and play exciting games of tickle and peek-a-boo, she will be perfectly happy. So when — without her afternoon nap — our little reveler closed the party on Christmas Eve only to awaken before the adults on Christmas morning, we were not too terribly shocked when she again was in high spirits despite only eight hours of sleep and another full day with absolutely no napping.

Maddi frolicked in the wrapping paper. She buried herself in toys. She managed to trick new cats into being petted, Mommy into bringing beverages within reach and cousins into taking hundreds of photographs. (Thankfully, cousin Jennie managed to do some tricking of her own and got Maddi laughing hard enough to show her new lower incisors for her very first pictures with teeth!)

But what goes up must come down. On Christmas night, well after her usual bedtime, I foolishly attempted to put Maddi down for a few hours while the other grown-ups enjoyed a game of euchre and I attempted to catch a few winks after my second consecutive week of sleeping not more than five hours a night. But lo, less than an hour after I put the wee one down, I heard baby noises. And there was our little Energizer bunny, in her Nana’s arms, wide awake as you please.

After an hour’s drive, we got the baby home at a ridiculous hour and, for the first time in weeks, I laid her in her crib asleep. Alas! It was not to be! They say sleep begets sleep, and apparently the opposite is true as well: Crazy begets crazy.

Maddi was up at 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., although she slept in until the unheard-of hour of 10 and napped again from 11 to 2. But, like a junkie after a weeklong binge, Maddi came crashing violently down today from her adrenaline bender. She hopped from toy to toy to toy, but took little joy in her playing. I couldn’t stray from within three feet of our poor little girl without her bursting into frantic tears. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted Daddy or Mommy and her afternoon nap stretched so long into the evening that I had to wake her up so I could bathe her for the first time in three days before putting her down for the night.

Our baby, who is usually quite jovial in the tub, cried her eyes out for the first half of her bath, barely held it together for the second, and cried piteously when she reached out for me and I took her out of the tub — because, apparently, she wanted both a bath AND Mommy (who knew?).

As a byproduct of teething and having a cold at once, Maddi has gone from enjoying bedtime to fighting it violently, burying her face in my shoulder when we near the crib, laughing and kicking when I put her down in an attempt to stall my exit, and wailing furiously when I head for the doorway. Thus, what once took five minutes now takes close to an hour, as I return time and time again to her room, rub her back and sing to her, and rinse and repeat as often as necessary. We can only hope that she goes back to her old self when the cold has run its course and her little top teeth have erupted.

Add to that the fact that she is thisclose to crawling and has suddenly realized that Mommy is an entirely separate entity from Maddi and can leave the room and, quite possibly, never come back, and you have a recipe for some really fun holiday times. No longer can she go in the playpen while I use the bathroom, run her bathwater or do a load of dishes or laundry. At least not while Daddy is on the phone doing business, because Maddi lets it be known that she does not approve of Mommy leaving her line of sight (or, today, an arm’s reach). This, along with wrapping and nighttime teething pain and coughing fits, is why every night for a few weeks I’ve been up until the wee hours of the morning.

We are hoping that Maddi will be in a better mood after having had a few good night’s sleeps and some semblance of her routine.

Otherwise, she may be fat and festively dressed, but she sure won’t be jolly — and neither will her keepers!

Twice in the past week, Maddi has — quite uncharacteristically — made a scene while we dined out. Normally, we can take the baby anywhere and she will remain fairly jolly the whole time. Last month, we went to a steakhouse after her 8 p.m. bedtime and lingered over dinner until 11 or so. Maddi required absolutely no attention from us whatsoever and showered radiant toothless smiles at the surrounding tables.

Struggling to figure out why our darling daughter, during normal waking hours and after having been fed and changed, decided to shriek and attempt escape from the constraints of her high chair, Chris came to a startling conclusion:

Maddi thrives on the attention of complete strangers. Sure, Mommy and Daddy are great, but there’s nothing better than having random people come up and say, “Ohh, what big blue eyes you have. Aren’t you the cutest thing?” upon which you smile and flap and receive cheek pinches and bacteria-laden finger-shakes and more cooing. Well, there’s one thing better, but those mean ol’ parents have forbidden chewing on shopping carts.

And it’s not as though she doesn’t have throngs of worshippers. Everywhere we go, we get stopped every 20 seconds by people telling us she’s the cutest baby they’ve ever seen. Maddi, ham that she is, eats this all up and smiles extra big and bright when she sees a strange face coming her way. The past few months, she has been doing this for the camera as well (which, combined with her devoted fan base, makes me worry more than a little that our wee one is under the illusion she is some sort of Hollywood star).

Any stranger will do, even a fake one. Even a possibly murderous one. The other day, I was carrying her from the room after nursing her while watching the Biography Channel, and she grinned gummily at the television as we passed. I looked to see whose giant face she was beaming at, and lo and behold, our little princess was bestowing a beautiful, sunny smile on none other than O.J. Simpson.

So when we’re in an empty restaurant with not a strange face in sight (not even a televised one), what’s a baby to do? Try to wriggle out of the high chair and roll down the aisle in search of fresh meat, that’s what! Of course, given our pesky hangups over filthy restaurant floors and roaming small children, Maddi is not allowed to launch her quest for new people to charm. Thus, Chris has hypothesized, she becomes irate and begins yelling and trying to extract herself from her tiny wooden pillory.

It’s a pretty good theory. Both times she’s pitched a fit in a restaurant, it’s been during a “dead” time when there has been nobody for our little darling to smile at. And we’ve already established that, the noisier the place and the more strangers there are, the happier our cherub becomes.

We all know she’s a friendly baby, but her need for adoring fans is bordering on the ridiculous. At her age, stranger anxiety is supposed to kick in, but for now, as long as Mommy or Daddy is nearby, Maddi is happy — nay, eager — to meet and greet perfect strangers.

Even televised ones who probably killed a few people.

And here is a 32-week-old Maddi smiling especially for you, her charter fan club! (And waving to boot!)

And another two of Maddi’s first time in the snow.

There’s nothing better than a gummy baby smile. Sadly, we will never see Maddi’s gummy little smile again.

That’s because, after months of slobbering, night-waking and biting, our little daughter has finally cut her first two teeth!

On Saturday while feeding her applesauce at Nana’s, I thought, just once, that I heard something scraping the spoon. But when she smiled later, I couldn’t see anything rising up from her wee pink gums. Tonight in the bath, however, as I was washing her little mouth, she bit me — and there was a little something extra, it seemed. I pulled back her lower lip and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw two teensy white ridges, barely visible but very easy to feel.

They won’t be showing up on camera for awhile yet because getting her to show her teeth is about as easy as getting her to allow us to suction her nose, but Maddi definitely has two sharp little lower incisors.

Coming someday soon: Pictures of the wee one’s little chompers.

Our house has never been babyproof. Oh, I’m sure that before he met me, Chris’ house was like a padded cell. Perhaps it is a man thing, an outcropping of that stereotypical (but true) fixation with gadgets, but he has a predisposition for buying more safety products than can ever be used. Furniture tethers, cabinet latches, outlet protectors, bath thermometers — he had them all. He even had tethers for bottom-heavy furniture, just in case.

However, on my arrival, the house descended into chaos. Now, glass-topped tables beckon in all their shiny, forbidden glory. Delicious-looking lipsticks lie unlocked in an easy-to-reach vanity drawer. Electrical cords have put out tentacles in every corner of the house. And, since we moved last year, the stairs have been sans gate.

We hardly dare mention the havoc of the kitchen — giant blue sacks of recyclables scattered hither and yon, filled with such exciting toys as glass bottles and plastic bags. Or the cat fur that has taken over every corner in the house owing to the fact that I rarely find time to vacuum while Maddi is awake, and for obvious reasons cannot do so while she is asleep.

For the past seven months, we have not really needed to do anything about rooms other than Maddi’s. Our baby has been happily ensconced in what Chris calls “The Pink Palace” and, until now, has sat contentedly in her room for hours busying herself with toys and games (OK, I busy her with the latter).

But all good things must come to an end. Maddi’s recent gains in the rolling department have tipped us perilously close to the brink of needing to babyproof, and she’s been practicing some new skills that have made our position all the more precarious.

Now that our little princess is an accomplished sitter of some two months, she has limitless confidence. Her balance is good enough for her to know exactly how far she can lean in any direction, and if she can’t reach far enough to get what she wants, she’s learned to fall without hurting herself (most of the time — just recently she got her very first bruises!) and roll toward her goal. But that won’t quite do. Playing in the tub, she’s made a discovery in the past several weeks. The buoyant water lifts her sizable tummy so Maddi can get up on all fours. She crawls from one end of the tub to the other, although she hasn’t the strength to travel this way on land. But her little gears have been turning, and she’s certainly trying.

On dry land, Maddi has discovered that if she tucks one leg inward and splays the other out, she can lean over the tucked leg and lurch into perfect crawling position. Unfortunately, since she still lacks the strength and coordination to get up and crawl, she ends up flat on her face every time she pushes off. So she has come up with a novel solution.

If a toy is resting two or three inches beyond Maddi’s farthest reach, she leans over her tucked-in leg as far as she can, until she is almost in position to crawl, save for that one leg. Then she will pull herself forward with her arms, but leave her leg tucked beneath her for balance. It’s not a very effective maneuver, as it only gains her a few inches at most and half the time she loses her balance and ends up lying down. But slowly and surely, our wee daughter is becoming mobile.

Which means that I will have to become more mobile as well and finally get down to babyproofing.

And here’s a pic of Maddi at 31 weeks, safely constrained in her brand-new convertible seat for the very first time!

Just when I’d gotten used to having a six-month-old, here she is, turning seven months old! Our little darling is constantly developing new skills (although I guess we’d need to worry if she wasn’t!) and is getting more and more personality by the day. I’m sure sometime in the next year or two I will have a moment in which I suddenly want to send her back from whence she came, but so far, being a mother to Maddi has been seven months of good times. (Yes, even those first few sleepless, gassy months!)

What’s new with the wee one, you ask? It’s hard to know where to begin.

In addition to all the funny noises I’ve chronicled in this blog, she also sings to herself in the car, and also when she’s falling asleep now. She also jabbers away in the cutest little voice to her bath ducky as she’s chasing him on her neverending crusades around the tub — I’m assuming this is partly because of the bathroom’s excellent acoustics.

She understands her name and a few words such as “Daddy,” “cat,” “food” and “milk” and gets very excited not only when someone is preparing a bowl or a Gerber jar, but also when she sees her bib.

She can sit all day long if she feels like it, but when she’s tired, she will dive headfirst at the nearest parent and bury her face in his or her chest. When she’s not tired, she (finally!) uses this lunging skill to go after toys or to get on the floor and practice rolling, pivoting and wiggling her fat little legs behind her.

At long last, she has finally taken to tummy time. Although this past few days, it’s tummy time ALL the time. She takes very little interest in her toys, being held, or even sleeping. It’s all about trying to crawl. She’s been making a little bit of progress every day and so far has begun to occasionally push herself a few inches, but seems to have no idea how she did it when it happens.

Speaking of sleeping, Maddi’s now sleeping in a much-lower crib, thanks to her new mobility. Seems she figured out how to scoot directly underneath her mobile and frolic among the animals. It took three people and several hours to get the crib lowered, so Chris made the executive decision to lower it ALL the way and be done with it forever. (Well, until the next baby, anyway. Either the mattress goes back up then, or someone else with really long arms lifts the floppy newborn out for me!)

Those of you who met Maddi when she was a little newborn with bright peepers that took in everything and who witnessed the scary direct-eye-contact smile she developed at two weeks know that she has always been a very sociable baby. This now extends to playing with other babies (or at least manhandling their hands and faces) and loving on her favorite adults. She does have a bit of separation anxiety when I leave the room, especially when she’s overtired, but so far she still enjoys smiling gummily at strangers everywhere we go. In fact, we’ve been at restaurants and Maddi will wiggle and strain until she has a perch sufficient to allow her to beam warmly at the nearest table full of new faces. She is fairly indiscriminate, smiling at hoboes and salespeople along with grandmothers and small children. Thus, we have mixed feelings about her friendliness.

While she is a very jolly and friendly baby, our daughter does have her serious moments. Smiles are bestowed generously while she’s eating and while we’re out and about, and during personal interaction, but when Maddi is playing with her toys, it’s all business! Her little brow furrows in concentration while she bangs her stacking rings against each other, and scowls, cross-eyed, when gnawing on the soft blocks from her shape sorter. Our wee one looks very serious indeed when she shakes the living daylights out of her little velcro banana toy.

In addition to chewy, delicious toys, Maddi’s diet has expanded to include apples, sweet potatoes, avocadoes and wheat. (Rice gave her eczema, but strangely enough, wheat has been perfectly fine thus far.) The baby who used to spend 19 hours out of 24 nursing has pared her feedings down to fewer than 150 minutes a day. We are still waiting on teeth, despite months of drool and biting.

Here’s another interesting tidbit — Maddi’s finally getting more hair. After six months of the same old bald head, about a month ago, we noticed that her head was starting to “fill in” a little. Over the past several weeks, the short down has turned into a thatch of dark blonde fuzz and is really becoming obvious.

As she enters her next month, Maddi has hit another milestone — she’s outgrown her cute little infant carseat and will be moving up to a rear-facing convertible seat. It’s a good thing she is sitting so well, because, without her carrier, she will have to use that skill in shopping carts and restaurants.

There are some days when I wake up and have to remind myself that I have a baby, and here she is becoming such a very big baby already. (Sob!) If only I could freeze time, and keep my little seven-month-old forever!

And here is a photo of our little princess at seven months, competing with the kitties for treats!

Chris and I have opened up a can of worms, it seems, and there’s no closing it. Once our reluctant roller finally took a chance and started flipping over, it has been impossible to stop her.

Not only does she roll merrily on the floor, exploring her rapidly expanding ecosystem; she also motors around her crib like never before and cannot be trusted to stay put on a bed or, heaven forbid, a sofa. Give her a few feet of space and step back, and our little daughter gleefully tumbles about until something or someone stops her. The only thing that distracts her from flipping and flopping about is her occasional obsession with lying in a loose interpretation of the plank position, with her legs wiggling busily but (thus far) uselessly behind her.

Normally, her newfound mobility is an adorable thing, but unfortunately, one of her favorite opportunities to demonstrate her budding expertise arises at diaper-changing time. No longer do we have a baby who lies pliably on the change table whilst the hazmat team (aka Mommy) does its work. No, when it comes time to sanitize our wee biohazard’s blast zone, the little one delights in squirming and flailing and doing her very best impression of a flounder on a hook. Her insistence on flipping on her tummy is directly proportional to the severity of the diaper damage. Thus, if her Pampers and cute little velour sleeper contain a “spill” of FEMA-deserving severity, you can bet that Maddi will be twisting madly about on the change table, content only when she is lying on her front and the hazmat team is covered in, well, hazardous materials.

This is what you get when you wish for your baby to roll over like other babies. Somewhere, a mom who figured out how to neatly wipe poop off a wild, flopping baby three months ago is laughing.

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In other news, Maddi has learned her very first cute baby trick. You know the kind — some babies give kisses, some slap high fives, others clap. Maddi is a waver. She doesn’t have a dainty princess wave like her cousin Emily just yet — hers is more of a full-body wave, much like a dog that wags its entire body along with its tail. We started teaching her how to wave a week or so ago when Emily did her princess wave and I suddenly realized that somehow, baby tricks (which I so anticipated before there was an actual baby to do them) had gotten lost in the shuffle of daily life.

But I am pleased to announce that, after an intensive one-week seminar in waving “hi” and “bye-bye,” Maddi’s got it all figured out and she will be delighted to show you next time she sees you.

And here’s a picture of our 30-WEEK-OLD baby!! I can’t believe she is this old. I also can’t believe she’s on her tummy and smiling.