Heaven Meets Earth

Chloe is an absolute charmer these days. She is demanding, in a very sweet, social way. She is never as happy as when someone is doting on her and trying to make her laugh. This, she rewards with the most conversant chuckle I believe I've ever heard from an eight-month-old.

I have a silly game I play with my clients, whose attention I'm trying to train. I take a toy and slowly raise it up over my head, making a buzzing sound effect as I do it. As I raise up the toy, making sure it's in the child's line of vision, I also raise the pitch of my voice. I'm trying to teach the kid to attend to the sound of another person's voice, and to the toy, and the play action with the toy, all at once. For many of the kids I work with, this is a goal in and of itself; for Chloe, not such a problem.

She sits in front of me, entranced, and tottering to keep her balance. She's sitting on her own now, but if unsupported, can stay up for only so long -- about a minute -- before she starts to weeble and wobble. Sometimes she can right herself out of the wobble, sometimes she needs to prop herself up on an arm, and other times she just loses it and plops full force down. Needless to say, we play this game on a soft surface, with lots of pillows and covers around her to prop her up if needed.

So she sits in front of me, fixing her gaze on the toy as it rises up to the top of my head. Her eyes flicker back and forth between my eyes and the toy, twinkling. As I rest the toy on my head, I let it sit there for a second, for effect. She rewards me with a sweet low chuckle, and continues to laugh, waiting for what she knows will come next. I count, slowly, with a silly voice... "ooooone, twooooo ........ threeeee..... CRASH!" and let the toy fall just inches in front of her. Well, this totally undoes her, and she continues to giggle, weebling and wobbling, watching intently to see if I'll do it again. Sometimes she'll pick up the toy and hold it and shake it around; I'm waiting for the next stage, either where she'll offer it back to me to do it again, or put it up on top of her own head, and do the crash herself. She doesn't do it yet, but I'm sure it won't be long before she does.

If we play that game for awhile, and I want to take a break from entertaining her (say she's occupying herself just fine with the toy, and I think she's good for a bit of self-play), and I try to disengage by picking up a magazine or something else to read, she immediately clues in and starts to fuss. She has a sensitive radar that tells her right away if someone is NOT paying direct and constant attention to her!

When I tell Giles about this sequence, he'll roll his eyes, "Tell me about it... she's like that all day long!!" Sweet, but demanding of attention.

She is not yet crawling, but she can spiral around and around in little corkscrews where she rotates on her axis at the same time as her body turns in circles around the floor. It'd be interesting to dip her whole body in paint and put her on a giant sheet of butcher paper and see what cool patterns she makes. Not that I'm seriously considering doing this, but still, wouldn't that be cool?

The best time she had doing this was when we went to our friend's Aikido studio to give the two year old boys Owen and Jesse a chance to run around in a padded room. It's basically a giant studio covered with gymnastics mats, and Chloe had a huge area where she could just do that thing (no hard surfaces to roll onto). When I laid her on the floor she just went to town... corkscrew, spiraling in circles, covering major ground. She was happy as a whirling dervish.

When I lay her on her tummy, she is able to raise her torso up, using straight arms and the flat palms of her hands (has been doing this for many weeks now). She hasn't yet gotten up on all fours, but occasionally has done a backward scoot.

She never gets too awfullys frustrated with this, but still, I get the sense that she'd love to be able to motor more than she can, and will be much happier when she's able to locomote purposefully from point A to point B. Of course, once she learns to crawl, maybe she'll start yearning right away for the next stage. Is she going to be one of those kids who's never satisfied with where she is, for whom the grass is always greener at the next developmental level? Is that the bane of the youngest child? Was it true for me? Maybe I need to reflect on this... hmmm.

She doesn't love anyone more than her two brothers, and her favoritest activity is to sit on my lap, where she can easily pivot her head to watch them rollicking back and forth, whether they're wrestling each other, or it's just one of them running, or spinning, or jumping, or doing pratfalls. She just roars with laughter at their antics, and practically rises up out of her own body with the levity of it. If she hears one of their voices behind her, she gives herself whiplash turning around trying to spot them.

She's making all kinds of sounds lately, the kind in my trade we call "variegated babbling." Lots of consonant sounds paired with a wide variety of vowels... classic baby goo goo ga ga, mixed in with m, d, t, b, n, etc. My favorite, though, is her little Welsh girl L sound. She touches her tongue to the top of her mouth and blows air (and a lot of slobber) out the sides. Another thing she does with her tongue is she sticks it all the way out her mouth and very delicately curls the tip up, to touch her lip. Sometimes she aims it rakishly to the side of her mouth. It's very controlled and purposeful, and very cute. For about a week there, she had an actual "word." It was with a particular toy, a plush frog which, when you pushed its belly, would emit a "realistic" frog croak. Every time I did this, she would very intently attempt to imitate it. It came out sounding like a soft gutteral roar, but it was very clearly uttered in response to the frog's sound. Later, she transfered this skill over to a little Cookie Monster talking toy we have. Next week, it was gone; she was done talking to monsters and frogs.

All of this is overriden with the fact that she still doesn't sleep through the night and we are desperately sleep-deprived. We're up with her several times in the night still, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes she clearly needs to nurse. Other times she just is up, ready to play, cooing and being adorable in the face of our despair. Other times she seems in pain, whether from gas or teething; we're often not sure. Certainly when we're bone-tired we don't think as clearly as we otherwise might, and sometimes have difficulty discerning her need. These are the most frustrating nights. My most common plaint with her (at night and other times) is "I don't know what you need!" She's not an easy child to read, when fussy, and that is hard, especially when I'm so tired.

The other thing she does that absolutely slays me is when she's nursing, if I'm cradling her back with my free hand, she reaches behind herself, with unerring aim, and grabs my hand so she can hold my finger while she's nursing.

She absolutely glows like a pearl. Her skin is luminous in the creases and curves. It's like her angel energy is still hovering just below the surface. This is especially incongruous when her face is covered in food. Heaven meets earth.