She Has Mad Skills

The danger of giving these blog posts titles with timely cultural catch-phrases (see, "mad skills") is that they won't make any sense further on down the road (now there's an idiom that has been around long enough to be used with a degree of confidence). I'm going to stick with this title because if I've picked up on one thing in the past few weeks it's that learning so much so quickly can often be a process fraught with frustration which manifests itself in fits of fury (that's what your teachers will call alliteration). This isn't to say you've been a constant curmudgeon, but I have suffered a few blows to the head and can enter into evidence some bite marks to prove you've been busy learning.

A sampling of the new skills:
You know what sound a cow makes
You can cluck like a chicken
You have three signs you can use pretty routinely: more, all done and water (water and all done look very similar at this stage)
You can climb ALL the way up the stairs by yourself (the two room condo with no stairs is sounding really good again)
You can stack blocks
You can drink from a real glass cup without spilling too much
You can crawl really fast when being chased
You can pull up on anything (doors, tables, moving objects, Peanut)
You can, and do, eat everything from broccoli spears to plum-cots
You seem to know how to "put it back" but choose not to do it very often
You'll spit something out of your mouth when I ask you to (dogfood, paper towels, stale pretzels you find on the floor). Usually.

The look on your face when you climbed the stairs the first time was enough to quash the rising tide of fear in my heart. You worked hard, you tried several methods and you finally found one that worked. Previous attempts had ended in screaming fits, arched backs and wild lashing to and fro of the arms and head.

As I struggle with maintaining my sanity and sense of decorum as you hurdle through these learning phases I'm reminded of the time I procrastinated in grad school and found myself with 192 pages of papers to write in 8 days. On the morning before the last 30 pager was due I threw myself across my futon, screamed, cried and called your papa on the phone to tell him I just wasn't going to do it. He calmly told me to get up and write. If he had been there to hit, I probably would have smacked him. Instead, I got up and went to the computer and wrote a paper that received a better grade than it was worth. It has occurred to me that you come by your screaming fits rightly.

Last night, at the end of another busy day and up later than you should have been due to a tornado warning that kept us at the YMCA longer than usual, you had a complete meltdown. You threw yourself across the bed, arched you back and screamed loud enough to make the neighbors hair stand on end. Your papa told me to leave the room and he sang lullabies while you laid across his chest and wailed. I went to the other room and ordered a used copy of "The No Cry Sleep Solution." Eventually the crying subsided and I crawled into bed with you and papa.

This morning you woke up refreshed and ready to learn again. When you climbed into your house (by yourself) and found a stack of clothes you started trying to figure out how to dress yourself. It was so much fun to watch and while you never figured it out, you didn't loose your cool. Instead you've opted for a good long nap on my lap but in a few minutes, it will be time to go again. Get ready, get set.