Madeline has started to crawl. At least I am going to call what she is doing crawling. A baby with a shag carpet has distinct advantages over one that is on a wood floor or a short carpet. What Madeline is quite proficient at is to use the shag as a leverage point so that when she wants to get from one side of the carpet to the other she can pull on it like a rock climber to move forwards. I sat watching her wander around the room this morning and realized that at 8 months old she is a trouble seeking missile. While her toys offered her some minor occupation during her cross carpet journey’s she was most frequently headed for things that could be dangerous or messy. She went for the hamper filled with dirty laundry because it has small holes where she can get her fingers stuck in it. After flipping that upside-down to spill laundry on herself I moved her to the other side of the carpet. She moved to the edge and squeaked to a stop at the wood floor before doing a u-turn to find the wooden footrest that goes with the rocking/nursing chair by the window. She proceeded to knock that over nearly bashing it on her head. Among the most interesting objects on the floor is her wooden blocks set that comes with a cart. The cart can be pulled by a string and she can go hand over hand with the string to pull the cart towards her. The dangerous thing about this is that she now believes anything string like including a computer mouse cable, power cords, fishing twine, necklaces, loose sweater threads, rusty metal cables, or barbed wire are the most fun toys in the world to pull on. After falling backwards in a roll to bonk her head onto the wooden cart she had pulled next to her she was un-phased. She then moved on towards the bottom of the crib, a great structure to stick small hands into because it has metal springs and levers to simplify placing the baby in and out of the crib. I scraped my hand on that metal undercarriage after trying to resolve a little issue where I caught the bed skirt in the mechanism. But Madeline happily pulled at the springs and reached at the metal until she decided to try to pull herself up by the bars of the crib to a stand.

Madeline is also starting to make some serious strides in the vocal department. She talks non-stop when excited but it is somewhat incomprehensible what she is trying to say. Her latest vocalizations sound like the important words. Her tongue has been reaching down towards her lower lip to say things like “da-da-da”, “la-la-la”, and “lahhahvah”. So for father’s day I decided she was definitely saying “I love you daddy”. It probably meant something closer to – “Stand back - I am about to vomit a full stomach of yo-baby on you!” but I can have my little fantasy for now.