Tuesday, October 25, 2005

The Zen of Crawling

Well, folks, it's been awhile since I have felt inspired enough to write. Just as easily as my life complicated itself, it has uncomplicated itself these last couple of weeks. So, that all said, my life now consists of housework, romance novels, and making sure my little brown furry tornado, more commonly known as Gizmo, doesn't wreak havoc whilst she shadows me around the house.


However, today my routine has changed. Today I came over to my brother's house to help my mom with my adorable 5 month old neice, Shayce (pronounced Shay-see). She is the cutest baby ever! Her most recent accomplishment is holding her bottle for herself. And I'll be darned if she doesn't look absolutely pleased with herself when she does. She's even taken to plucking the bottle in and out of her mouth just to show that bottle who's boss.

She's also working on figuring out how to get her knees beneath herself and her arms in the right spot so she can start crawling. She works so hard at it, and babbles the whole time. The only thing is, her babbling sounds more like growling than anything else. As my mom puts it, "She the growlin'est baby I ever did see!" The most amusing thing about watching Shayce play on the floor is the fact that any time she accomplishes anything new, she gets a look of absolute shock on her face. She was floored when, at the pinnacle of her growling frustration, she managed to wedge one knee beneath herself and lift her abdomen off the ground with a heartfelt "Yayayayah!" This was soon followed by her body thumping back down to the ground and a millisecond of stunned silence from the hyperverbal baby. And then resumed the ooching, grunting, flailing, growling frustration of baby, broken intermittently by a screaming diatribe directed at one of her floppy, fuzzy playthings.

I think Shayce would agree that the few seconds of baby buttum elevated off the floor was worth it.