Today, Anna Sophia's mom went back to work. We experimented with me going to work last week, when I attended a workshop for a couple of days and also spent some time in the office surveying the clutter I had left behind me when I went on leave a year ago.
I came home from a half-day reintroduction to the work world to a happy baby, well-fed, and a not-yet-too-tired-to-make-sentences parent. She had only fallen on her head once, with only a mild abrasion to the cheek and a minor bump on the head. She had enjoyed her lunch so much, I could tell what she ate by looking at her shirt and pants.
Since her first steps, Anna retreated into more tentative wall- and furniture-surfing, insisting on having her hand held for longer trajectories and higher speeds than she could manage solo. But the last few days, walls and furniture have been left behind. Today, she walked from the kitchen to the living room and back numerous times, including one particularly exciting naked romp (during which she was atypically staggery, having lost the ballast of three pounds of pee in her diaper to help her maintain her centre of gravity).
She is also very chatty. We haven't the foggiest what she's saying, but she asserts herself in every conversation, usually with some vigorous nods of the head.
A favourite game of Anna's is the tickle game. She sneaks up behind someone who is crouched down or bending over and tickles them, making a special high-pitched tickling noise so they know they are being tickled.
When she's not walking or talking or tickling these days, she's kissing. She now puckers up her whole face to come in for a big smooch. She still doesn't like to get prickled by her dad's beard and so spends extra time taking careful aim and lining up lips when she's giving him a kiss. (So do I!)
Many kisses -- air kisses mostly -- are directed at the cat. Moon loves being chased as much as Anna loves chasing her, tho' we'll see how Moon responds when Anna is actually able to do some catching. Most mornings, Moon tears around the house, comes to a rest somewhere semi-accessible within Anna's line of vision, and waits to be noticed and followed -- then she tears away as soon as the baby is near. Both Moon and Anna especially enjoy the sofa. Moon goes back and forth behind it and Anna goes back in forth in front of it, and rarely the twain do meet until one or the other is too tired to resist any longer.
Today, she also figured out how to make a sound on the tin whistle, though the piano and the pots-and-pans orchestra remain her instruments of choice. She's been trying for days to get the damn thing to whistle for her. We've shown her how to exhale into it, but she would just grab it and hum a slobbery tune into it and hope for the best. Accidental exhalations, followed by flutey noises, followed by praise and applause from her audience let her know she was on the right track today. So she started alternating humming into it with making it whistle. The slobber remains the consistent element.
She's teething, and we have absolutely no idea what we're doing when it comes to putting her to bed or keeping her in bed at night, but the fact is that she is way, way ahead of us and when we're groggy, we lose even more ground to her nefarious strategies. Here's her logic: If I cry until I throw up, Mom and Dad will have to lift me out of my crib and change all the sheets and by that time I'll have done all the playing I want. Or: If I cry hard enough, Mom and Dad will worry that I'm going to throw up and will lift me out of my crib to avoid the extra laundry. Either way, she gets lifted out of her crib, which was her goal all along.
We suspect that if we come up with a counter-strategy, Anna will prove to already have a new tactic in reserve. When I asked my mother -- ever ready to provide advice when asked -- for ideas, she made several helpful suggestions, but when I said, "But don't you think she'll just try something new to get us to lift her up?" even mom faltered. "Yeah, you're right," she said, "you were like that when you were a baby." Any behaviours Anna exhibits that I exhibited first are cause for Stephen to label our darling chickadee "grandma's revenge."
