Time Marches On

My daughter turned 8 months old earlier this week. In the last few days, she's managed to cut her top two front teeth, learn to pull up and break my heart.

She's babbling a lot. Ma-ma, ba-ba, bwa-bwa, squealing, screaming and misc other noises are her favorites. I don't think the sounds mean anything to her but are just fun to do. However, when she's standing in baby jail (the pack and play) crying and screaming MA MA just breaks my heart and I can't help but talk to her.

She has a love/hate relationship with baby jail. She's got toys in there that she only get to play with in the pack and play. And I don't put her in there a lot - maybe a total of 10 minutes a day. She's only there when I can't watch her every minute or I need a break. The rest of the time, she's on the move.

I'm babyproofing the way my mom did - very minimally. She only believed in using common sense and socket plugs but otherwise she said that keeping close watch over kids and removing or distracting the child when they got in trouble was the best way to do it. She always believed that kids should be able to go to anyone's house. She said that most folks don't need to babyproof their home as they had no baby! So it was better to teach a child to leave stuff alone rather than put the pressure on the host to babyproof their house for this one child.

My mother often told a story about taking me to see an elderly aunt when I was about 18 months old. The aunt starting removing her knicknacks from tables and low shelves and my mother stopped her. "Amanda will leave them alone." Then she told me to look but not touch. She would laugh at this point, because I primly placed my hands behind my back so that I could look at the pretty things around the house without the temptation to touch them. "Temptation get behind me" my mother would always say.

So babyproofing for my little one has included moving my laptop from the living room (she loves the velcro on the cord and the little reel I use for my mouse), being extra careful with beverages, and making sure that small things like beads and eyelets are kept off the floor. My kitchen floor has never been cleaner.