Warm weekend

The warm weather continued today, a welcome respite from the frosty January conditions of the past few weeks. After our walk along the Canal Walk yesterday we spent some time playing in the front yard. And today Madeline walked all the way around the loop in front of our house. It's close to a tenth of a mile - a long way for someone taking such tiny steps.

Even though Madeline's getting pretty skilled at walking around the house, I have to remind myself that she still needs some help when we're out in the world. The ground (especially the pavement) is much less forgiving to baby hands and knees than the carpet. And the ground outside isn't always nice and level.

Madeline has enjoyed exploring the yard and picking through the leaves and weeds scattered about, but wasn't too interested in walking unassisted (I was holding her hands on our lap around the loop today). I guess there's no need to walk somewhere else when there's so much interesting stuff right under your feet.

Baby on board

After all of my talk about cabin fever, we knew we had to do something outside today to take advantage of the spring-like weather. We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to find a local hike and try out the new backpack baby carrier we received for Christmas.

We ended up at the Canal Walk, a meandering, scenic walkway that follows the historic canal system along downtown Richmond's waterfront. We had a great time - Lacey and I got to see some new things and Madeline enjoyed her ride, happily chattering from her perch behind my head and at times playing with my hair and sunglasses. It was exactly the kind of activity we needed - it was outside, it was active, it was free and it included all of us.

The forty-eighth week

It's been a busy week for us. After writing last week about how we need to get out of the house more, we found activities for every day this week. We've spent time at friends' and family members' homes and went to the grocery store, the gym and a Chinese restaurant for lunch. We haven't had to visit a big-box store yet, although I'm not ruling that out as the cold winter days continue.

As I expected, Madeline has enjoyed being out. I've also been letting her walk around more when we're out, even though she usually wants to walk in a direction where danger lurks, such as the parking lot. And, surprisingly, she has little interest in holding my hand while we walk around - she wants to let go and take off. So much for timidly exploring the big new world. She's ready to pounce and experience everything she can, with or without daddy.

On another note, today we attempted to use another barrette after the last one caused us so much trouble. This time she was not out of our sight while it was in, and she hardly seemed to notice. It kept her hair out of her eyes and looked pretty cute, too!

Eleven months

Since today is Madeline's 11-month birthday, I thought I'd get out the video camera this morning and see what fun things she would do for me. Sort of a snapshot of where she is at 11 months.

There are skills she has that are not in the video, such as talking. She can say "bye-bye" (almost always accompanied with a wave, and almost always uttered after the subject has left), "da da," "ma ma" and sometimes "ba ba" when it's time for her bottle. She doesn't always reserve these words for their proper recipient - she'll chant "ma ma ma" or "da da da" randomly throughout the day - but she's pretty good about using them at the right time, too.

Notes:

Eating: Madeline's eating pretty normal adult food these days. Lacey often makes versions of our dinners for Madeline, and even creates special quiches and other concoctions for her. I have enjoyed making scrambled eggs (a favorite of mine) for Madeline, too.

Napping: Several weeks ago I wrote about Madeline suddenly stopping her normal nap routine. We decided to play more to her schedule, and it turned out she was telling us she was ready to transition to two naps per day, instead of three. Now she naps at about 9:30 and then again at about 2, both for 60-90 minutes. Bedtime is around 7:15.

Going up (and down)

For several weeks Madeline has been pretty adept at climbing the stairs. In a matter of seconds she'll climb halfway up, stopping only briefly to look over her shoulder (where she always finds one of her parents, of course).

But it's been only recently that she's been able to get back down the stairs. I didn't realize she had been practicing, but yesterday she was going down almost as fast as she got up.

She gets plenty of practice climbing up and down by using the ledge between our home's entryway and the living room. She's been getting up on the ledge without difficulty for a long time, but has had a little more trouble getting down. I'm thankful, however, that she at least realizes there's an elevation change and doesn't walk or crawl off the ledge at full speed!

To get down the ledge, she initially approached slowly, lowered herself onto her stomach, placed both hands on the lower level and then slid the rest of her body down with a thud. But this week she's taken a new, more inventive tack. She approaches much more quickly and confidently, but now she stops at the edge, turns herself 180 degrees and lowers her feet down. Once her toes touch the ground she swivels around again so she's facing forward and is ready to go. In fact, she is often able to walk away from the ledge because her feet are hitting the ground first and she doesn't have to pull herself up.

One of the most entertaining aspects of watching her motor about the house is watching her work to solve problems. One of the least entertaining is that she always wants to climb!

Getting out

Over the past few days I've come to a realization that seems astonishingly obvious when I look back over months of Madeline's behavioral patterns. She wants to get out.

The frigid January weather has kept us mostly indoors - we don't stray far on weekdays and Lacey has stopped taking afternoon walks with Madeline. Blame it on a combination of the bitter cold, the effort it takes to get everyone bundled up, and the fact that we don't have many errands to run. But it's starting to have a noticeable effect. Madeline's getting cabin fever.

It really hit me yesterday when Madeline's mood swings perfectly illustrated the situation. She was grumpy all morning, fussing through playtime and breakfast and then taking an abbreviated morning nap, from which she awoke in tears. So we took a walk in the neighborhood, stopping at an estate sale on the next block. Madeline loved looking around an unfamiliar house and watching the hordes of strangers walking around. On the walk back home she was bouncing happily in her stroller and laughing with me.

Once we got back home, though, the fussing resumed. After lunch we paid a visit to a friend of mine who has an 11-week-old boy and a big, excited dog. Despite her lack of sleep for the day, Madeline completely opened up during our visit - happily chattering and exploring and playing with the dog. And then she talked with me from the back seat on the entire car ride home.

It seems so obvious - she's happy when we're out and about. And then I started thinking about her tendency on house-bound afternoons to continually get into things and go places she's not supposed to go. She's bored! She's tired of the same toys and the same seven rooms, day in and day out. She loves walking and visiting new places. And she loves looking out of the large bay window in the living room (see the pictures here) - is she longing for escape?

So what do we do about this? It's still pretty cold outside, so playing in the yard or visiting the park isn't really an option (the root of the problem to begin with). I've heard of parents taking their young children to big-box stores like Lowe's just to look at all the stuff. I hate to encourage that kind of consumerism (and besides, I might be tempted to buy things I don't really need), but that actually seems like a good idea. It would give Madeline a chance to see new things and get us all out of the house (she's not the only one suffering from cabin fever).

Maybe this week we'll give it a shot.

The forty-seventh week

The story of this week has been a pretty big one - Madeline started walking by herself on Sunday evening and hasn't looked back.

In those first couple days she was only walking from one object to another - from the coffee table to the chair to the television cabinet, etc. In other words, she was walking to a destination, and generally one that was within about 7 or 8 feet. Something she could steady herself upon.

But later in the week she started taking longer jaunts with no particular destination. She walked from room to room, around corners and objects. (Imagine my surprise when I looked aside while brushing my teeth this morning to see Madeline toddling around a corner toward me, instead of crawling as she usually does.)

At first she usually walked toward me, wild eyed with arms outstretched. But now, when I sit on the floor nearby, she sometimes veers around me and carries on to bigger and better things.

With all this walking have come a few spectacular collapses. Mostly she loses her balance gradually, teetering for a moment and then plopping down on her bottom or her knees. Sometimes she loses control more quickly and ends up with a belly flop. And while she can steer herself in wide patterns, she has trouble avoiding obstacles that are directly in front of her feet, such as toys and table legs.

I find myself cringing occasionally when she's going full-tilt and there's nothing nearby for her to grab - like she's riding without training wheels. I find myself picturing, again, all the bad things that could happen. But, aside from a couple minor bumps, she's survived her first week of bipedalism in splendid fashion.

Scaredy pants

One of Madeline's favorite pastimes recently is to have the stuffing scared out of her. I wrote earlier about how she plays hide-and-seek around pieces of furniture. Sometimes she'll slowly peek around the edge, craning her neck to see what's around the corner. If she doesn't see anything, she creeps out a little farther. Then, when mommy or daddy suddenly appear, she jumps in fright, but her scream quickly turns into a laugh. And then she does it again. Maybe she'll be one of those people who likes haunted mansions and roller coasters when she grows up.

Feeding time

Madeline's been getting the hang of feeding herself. We've been letting her handle her own spoon occasionally for several months, and she's learned to handle the sippy cup like a pro.

For Christmas she got a couple training spoons - they're curved to fit her grip and the spoon is designed to prevent the food from sliding off. She has been using the new spoon for several weeks now and has gotten pretty good at getting most of the food into her mouth.

She's still working on getting the food out of the bowl - for now she holds her spoon out while mommy or daddy puts food on it, and then she chows down.

Toddling

Madeline is officially a toddler now. Yesterday, for the first time, for real, Madeline started walking. I'm not talking about taking a few unaided steps before tumbling into someone's waiting arms (or onto the floor).

I'm talking about standing next to one piece of furniture and walking across the room to another piece of furniture, without diving at the end. I'm talking about confident steps, stopping midway to survey the situation while standing unaided and then continuing to the destination. I'm talking about arriving at the endpoint and still standing, even turning in a new direction and walking again.

It started small - an out-of-the-blue stroll from the rocking chair to the coffee table almost five feet away. Then back to the chair. Then from the chair to the television cabinet - also about five feet. And today it continued with several confident walks from the coffee table to the front entryway, about 7 feet. And she could easily go farther, if there were no obstructions.

We also played a fun game with Cheerios - I put a pile on her Exersaucer a few feet away from where I was sitting. She would walk to the Exersaucer, grab a handful of Cheerios and, without using her hands to steady herself, turn around and walk back to me.

There's no doubt about the fact that she's walking now. And you can tell from the grin on her face while she's toddling around that she loves it!