Magrilless

Durango, CO

Thank you, Fort Lewis College!

Maggie says, “Happy Valentine’s Day! But I’m confused about my shirt’s mixed message. Does it say that I do love you or that I don’t love you. Dumb shirt designers. I do love you!”

There has been an explosion of walking-ness around here. She has felt comfortable doing a lot of walking upstairs on the carpet, but was hesitant about bringing the skill to the hardwood floors. Not anymore! She’s tooling around like a pro. There are a fair number of “oops. bonk. can’t do it that way.” moments, but no contusions or concussions and lots more confidence. She even struck out on her own at Ikea this weekend.

Unfortunately she’s also re-caught her cold. So there’s a bit of touchiness and sleeplessness going on. For instance, she’s been awake for 52 minutes of her hour-long nap so far. And she’s less amused now than she was at minute 40. So Mom to the rescue. But Happy Valentine’s Day!

Well, there have been a few more steps this week. If she’s in the right mood when we wriggle free of her hand, she’ll go one or two steps before dropping to her knees and asking for a finger again. She just lacks the confidence to do it on her own. When she’s holding on to one of us, she barely uses the hand for balance at all. And in fact, sometimes it makes her fall, like when she suddenly decides to go in a different direction than the finger was expecting. But she doesn’t feel like she can go it alone yet. Cautious cautious girl.

This weekend we went to a big party at Bill’s advisor’s house and Maggie was a star. She spent three hours alternately chasing a dog and the other two kids in attendance. She went an hour past dinner and bedtime without a complaint, and everyone thought she was darling and wonderful and all that. She exceeded our expectations, and we got to have fun too!

We are now all over our colds, and it seems possible that Maggie’s has gotten out of the habit of waking at 4:30, crying for 2 minutes, silent for 5, crying for 2, silent for 5, and on until 5 or 5:15 when she falls asleep again. That was new this week. And possibly, hopefully, not a new long-standing behavior.

So it has happened! Maggie took her first steps! Last night I decided to try another time to trick her. She and I went walking around each holding different ends of a fat paintbrush. When she was paying attention to something else and not really using the brush in my hand for balance, I just let go. And go she did! She kept on walking until she realized what she’d done and then dropped to her knees. Wonder of wonders is we got it on video!

We were able to reproduce this a couple times. And actually after maybe three times, she didn’t want to hold on to a hand to start off; she just wanted to be set on her feet. You’d better believe we did this for as long as she wanted to! We were all very very excited. And Bill and I were very very excited that she waited until we were back in town to do this. Thank you, Maggie!

Today she was wholly uninterested in walking alone and got frankly mad when we tried The Trick or some variation of it. And she had a horrendously wakeful night last night. We were vaguely prepared (i.e., we’d read a long time ago in the child rearing books) that developmental milestones would interrupt sleep. But holy cow. At one point around 2, Bill just decided to go downstairs and work. Here’s hoping that a day off of solo walking and a very sleepy baby will make for a full night’s sleep tonight. How did we ever do this every night for weeks and months?

Maggie’s a toddler!

This is Maggie’s Fonzie impression. It comes complete with a little grunt that’s close to the “Aaayh” like the Fonz does. She picks up on stuff nowadays. Time to start being especially careful about what we say and do.

She’s going strong with the one-handed walking. We walk through stores hand-in-hand now. And do a lot of chasing people and dogs in the house. Although she continues to walk on her tiptoes. Even when I give as little support as I can in my assisting hand, she gets up on her toes to go walking. There was an encouraging period of a day or two when the one-handedness got her on flat feet. But she’s just convinced she needs to be taller I guess. I had a brilliant thought a while ago that maybe shoes would force her to put her feet flat. Thanks to orthopedic knowledge, though, all these baby shoes today have very flexible soles so that she can still get on her toes. Darn that science making my baby grow up with healthy parts. At least wearing shoes means she can walk in public places (like the aforementioned stores where bare feet on the floor would be gross), but she’s constantly walking out of the things because she’s on her toes. When you’re only using half the shoe . . .

We’re battling a cold right now. I got it first and have passed it on to Maggie and Bill. Bill seems to be coping well; Maggie is struggling to get over it. She’s not sleeping well at night because of all the stuffiness. Naps too have been shorter and interrupted. She gets mad mad mad when anyone tries to wipe the snot from dripping out of her nose. And benadryl is not her favorite flavor in the world. We’ve been pushing fluids and persisting with the dreadful medicine, lots of vitamin C rich foods, and time to space out reading books and watching Star Trek. It’s hard to explain to a busy 14-month old that it’s important to take it easy when you’re sick. But I think we must be on the other side of it now. We must.