More Reading

In our living room, we have a horrible chair.  It is squat, and covered in something that might be leather, but is probably not.  It has followed us around since the earliest days of our furniture acquisition, and it persists.

It’s not actually uncomfortable; lying sideways across it is a beautiful experience, and if one is short, one can still sprawl sit happily in it without a footrest.

But it’s ugly.

We brought it down when we first began to pen Margaret in the dining room.  It was low enough that she didn’t feel that we were abandoning her, and enough of a chair that we didn’t feel like we were spending hours on the floor.

It then became an integral part of the anchoring system that held the fence across the living room.

Now that we’ve expanded Margaret’s pen to include all of the living room and dining room except for the computer, it has no purpose.

But today, Margaret found it. She can just, if she concentrates really hard and if her mother has put something she really wants in the back of it, clamber up onto it.  And once there, why not relax?*

Of course, Goodnight Moon doesn’t last very long.

But you can climb down onto the floor, and read it again.  It’s a very different story on the floor, you know.  Completely changes the interpretation.

*The book is upside down, but she’s more interested, right now, in the look.

Nice, Clean Dirt

When we got home this evening, Margaret discovered that in our absence, some nice person had left some lovely dirt in our yard.

Margaret approved.

She proceeded to sit down, pick up dirt with her left hand, and pass it to her right for safekeeping.  Of course, it dribbled out again, and so she just kept going.

She offered some of the excess to me.

Then to Leo.

Then she worked out that she could just clutch it to the chest of her white sweater, and she could hold more of it.

A good time was had by all, and she only tried to eat the dirt once.  She was – wonder of wonders – stopped by Leo and I saying no.  I think that the putting things in her mouth is at this point partially just absent-mindedness, and when she pays attention, she’s a bit more discriminating.

Margaret Casts Her Bread Upon The Waters, Feeds Loaves To Fishes, And Otherwise Behaves Vaguely Biblically

Not, however, in any sense that you could really pin down.  In fact, most if this biblical behavior seems to exist entirely in the way that her mother writes about it, which seems needlessly confusing.

In short, all this verbal posturing is meant to introduce a picture documenting a trip to the Botanical Garden on which Margaret fed ducks and fish.  We’ve been working on throwing this week, and she really put it to good use.

And she only tried to put a ducky food pellet in her mouth once.  Although in the video to follow, you can see her thinking about it in the momentary pause between picking up the pellet and moving to throw it.

Sometimes A Girl Likes To Read

Margaret’s not actually that big on people reading to her; we’re too slow, for one thing, and we’re wedded to this ridiculous notion of progression and order and not having our thumbs slammed in the books.

But she very much likes going off and reading by herself, at her own speed, without the pesky intervention of adults.*

This morning’s book of choice was Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks, which is not, despite its main characters Fox and Knox, about the Reformation.

I would also like to draw attention to her truly marvelous hair plume.  She had a bath last night (following the tomato sauce incident) and it’s really doing well this morning.

Anyway, she finished,

scoped out the rest of the room,

and went to play the piano.

*Also, according to some study I’m too lazy to look up so I can link to it, playing with books at her age is just as good as actually reading them.  I don’t believe it, really, and would prefer that she wanted to listen to books, but we’re doing all right now reading books I have memorized, so it doesn’t matter where she goes with them.

Baby Schroeder

I’m not sure how many of you are Peanuts devotees, but yesterday Margaret was doing a reasonable impression of Schroeder.

For those of you who can’t remember, here is Schroeder:

Anyway, Margaret, by various devious means known only to ebay, has acquired a small piano.  Not a grand piano, as pictured above, but a 2-octave upright, just her size.  She adores it.

When it came yesterday, she spent at least 25 minutes playing with it, and then went back to it for the 40 minutes before dinner.  I feel that this is a pretty impressive attention span for a 1-year-old.

She also firmly removed my hands from it when I tried to play, which tells us that she’s figured out ownership, at least as far as things can be hers and not mine.

Also, I think she’s already posing for soulful pictures with her piano.

Another Tomato Sauce Post

I don’t, by the way, always post when Margaret eats something with tomato sauce in it.  There have been numerous occasions where she has eaten tomato-based Indian foods, pizza, even pasta, where I have resisted the urge to post her sauce-covered mug.

But last night was particularly cute (and I’m not just saying that because I’m her mother; it really was adorable).

She started off eating her rotini.

And then, while I was busy snapping pictures like a besotted devoted parent, she finished the trayful, and made the all gone sign I realize I’ve been teaching her.

(And yes, for those of you with too much time on your hands, these pictures are out of sequence, because she’s making very funny faces in the first, less-sauced series of pictures, and I have some respect for her eventual dignity.  Not much, as I’m posting pictures of her eating pasta naked, but some.  The sequence of events, however, is as narrated).

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can*

[This is a post I should have written a week ago.  You can tell by the sunshine and the shorts that it isn’t entirely current, because we’ve decided, apparently, to have snow again.  Humph.]

Being unfettered by carseat or stroller or somebody holding her hand and suggesting that she not run out into the street is one of the joys of Margaret’s life.

So when Ron and I took her out to a soccer field, she was in heaven.

Still, she likes to make certain that all her attendants are still around before she takes off again.  Margaret’s not a baby who likes shirking when it comes to attending to her.

Things, thankfully, were entirely in order, and she could resume her recreational running away.

This gave way, of course, to sitting on the ground and contemplating things, before becoming more running.

*This is not to suggest in any way that Margaret’s Uncle Ron** is treating her as any sort of gingery confection.  He is pursuing her for her own safety, not with any untoward intentions of a snacking variety.

**We’ve been through this already.  It’s not my fault that my family is really boring when it comes to naming people, all right?  Don’t even get me started on the accidental rhyming.