Madeline has reached some great milestones this week. The big thing is that she has started to become aware of things enough to manipulate them with her hands. The best example of this is that when she is in her swing or bouncy chair with a bunch of bead like toys on an arched piece of metal she will push them up and down as if she is using an abacus. This also extends to hanging objects like the birds and bees that are a part of most baby gyms and toys. She can now purposefully bat at them and often hits them to make them spin. She also responds with a lot of wonder at mirrors and is smiling more often when I dance above her while doing beat box style songs.

With Madeline getting more sophisticated we are preparing for the next phase of her life – college. Actually we are more preparing for when she can sit-up in a chair and eat. Oddly despite being able to sit-up in a chair and eat for over 30 years, neither Sarah or I have configured our lives to do this often in the apartment. We generally eat using the coffee table while watching the Family Guy or another DVD. But since we have an Italian Prima Poppa rocking high chair we wanted to be able to eat at the table with Madeline. So Sarah chose a nice high table to go with the high chair to install where our bookcase in the living room was. We picked-up the table on Friday and I assembled the high chair on Saturday. The high chair assembly wasn’t without some humor. It is possible to assemble it wrong. See below: Note the chair is a rocker!

BTW: I posted more photos of Madeline from the past few weeks this morning.