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05/06/2008: "Small Wonder"
We're trying to teach Dessa to sing. It's not as odd as it sounds, since she has recently taken up repeating "EEEE-EYEEEE-EEEE-OOO" about a thousand times a day. It sounds suspiciously like the refrain to "Old MacDonald" and thus in response to her we break out in the nursery favorite to make her laugh. So far she's completely off key in her song stylings, but I assume that will change with time. Next stop, American Idol.
She's moving from repetitious "Dadada" to "Daddy" and "Nananana" to a clear "Nana" but very little by way of "Mama" these days. I suspect this has everything to do with the fact that I don't allow her to play with the remote control, an item she covets dearly. She's simply dying to walk and cruises around the furniture like a drunken monkey in quest of the remote. Meanie that I am, I set it on the chair arm furthest from her and she obligingly trudges toward it. Just as she's getting close... I move it to the other side. Gamely she edges toward it again. After a few back and forth trials, she'll often raise her round brown eyes to me and firmly announce, "Daddy" as though certain that her father will hand over the item in question because I clearly will not. When I reassure her that Daddy is upstairs but doesn't fancy her sucking on the remote any more than Mommy does, she thinks for a moment and says, "Nana", certain that my mother would grant her heart's desire if only she were present.
In this she is darling, but wrong.
Dess spends most of her time standing these days, eager to move. She stands unsupported for whole minutes at a time now, and reaches down for items on the floor if she's supported with one hand. It's hilarious to watch her figure out just how far she can reach and how much to spread her legs to support herself. Detective that she is, she knows she can't quite walk on her own yet (though she's a speed demon with the lion walker) so when she's stuck by the couch with a no-man's land between her and her toys, she reaches one hand out demandingly to whatever adult is closest and then drags us behind her as she makes a beeline to wherever she wants to go. There's nothing so entertaining to me as watching her get around these days. I love it, though the marked increase in her falling down puts my heart in my throat most of the time. I'd like to set her up with one of those padded sumo wrestler suits to protect her but alas, no. She has several little bruises on the backs of her legs and butt from falling, ker-splat!, right on an inconveniently discarded plastic farm animal.
She can finally get up to sitting position on her own now. Because she went right to standing and cruising, skipping the crawling stage, she didn't spend much time on her stomach - a position she's always hated except for sleeping. So she wasn't practicing moving from stomach to sitting. She'd just roll onto her back and flail like a turtle. A turtle with a flair for drama. But last week she started pushing herself up to sitting and now when I go in her room to get her in the mornings or after a nap, she's generally sitting up, babbling to her blanket.
And this weekend she started pulling herself up to standing. All this moving around tires her out but, as usual, she's so afraid of missing anything that she often fights her naps. I had put her down and left her room, but she was working up to a whopper of a fit so after about 10 minutes of increasing fussing, I went back into the nursery. And there she was, standing at the foot of her crib, wailing at the door, face red with frustration, real tears on her cheeks, a tiny prisoner in feetie pajamas.
It was almost enough to get her out of her nap. Almost.
It's so strange, how she sort of leveled out for a few weeks, just practicing her skills and then, bang - a bunch of milestones at once. It started when she made the connection to feed herself (broken off bits of popcorn did the trick and now she lurves feeding herself, often to the point of having a mouth absolutely stuffed with Cheerios). Then standing, cruising, pulling up to sitting and standing. Yesterday my mom said she was crawling but I haven't seen it for myself. It's all remarkable. She's becoming this real little person who's so fun to be around. Not that I didn't adore being with her as an infant. This is just such a fun stage. I wish, as I have wished with all stages, that she'd just stop for a while, remain this Dessa for just a little longer than I know she will.
Too fast, too fast.
Notes from a Yarn Hacker
