Nothing Is Safe

It's totally cool if Annabelle plays with
the coffee creamer, because she doesn't
knows how to take off the screw top.

Remember my daughter? The one I write about here so often? I'm not sure where she has gone, but an even more busy, active, acrobatic sort of child has appeared in our house to take her place. She is strikingly similar  to my child in appearance, but there's really no way she could be the same girl. The last time I saw Annabelle, my fifteen month old, was on Sunday night. I remember it clearly: I was in the kitchen washing dishes and she came in, fresh from her bath, and reached her arms toward me, signing "milk." She then walked toward the couch and threw her arms over it, signaling that she wanted me to pick her up and sit down there to nurse her to sleep. She does this every time she wants to nurse, because she's not yet able to climb up onto our sofa herself, you see. 

I nursed her to sleep and she slept for only a short while before waking again, and then again. I have noticed before that a fitful night's sleep often precedes a leap in development, which is what I thought explained the strange events of the following day.

We started our morning in the back yard, where I sat to have a cup of coffee. Instead of wandering and exploring, the girl climbed the other adult-sized chair and sat there, babbling away at me for some time. Funny, I thought, this is the girl who hasn't even worked out how to climb up on her own, child-sized chairs in the kitchen. What a change!

Yep. Thinking this whole shelf needs to come down.

Later that morning, she had an appointment with her pediatrician and the climbing continued. She climbed a table in the waiting room, and later carried the activity center intended to entertain children in the exam room, over to the sink and stood up on it. When we arrived home, she wanted to nurse, so she climbed up on the couch and reached out for me to join her. That was when I became suspicious. A bit later, she pulled herself up to stand on the toilet and check out all of the fragile and otherwise dangerous things I had placed on a shelf above it (because you know, that way the bathroom was toddler safe. Err. Not so much anymore.). It was then that I knew this could not be the same girl I had nursed to sleep the previous night. So it appears that the game has changed, and I need to reorganize. There's a new toddler in town, and nothing is safe from her.

The masterpiece

The daughter I had last week didn't seem to play independently for all that long, but this new kid - let me tell you what! She is busy all day long and does not have the time to stop and worry about things like where I am or what I'm doing. Today, while I was cooking dinner, she created an entire art installation on the coffee table using items she had taken from cabinets and shelves in several different rooms of our house. It was clear that she was acting on a creative force from deep within. She moved with purpose, and the result was impressive.

The child I had last week would signal that she was finished with dinner by squirming frantically and trying to stand up in her chair. This new child? She picks up the scattered bits of food on the table and puts them on her plate, then plops her fork down on top, pushes the plate away from herself, and signs, "all done." 

Last week's child was growing ever more communicative, but this new child? She answers every question with a clear, "yeah!" or "no." She walks over to me and signs, "cracker" when she wants a snack. She points at her trainer when she needs to use the bathroom and on the way there even informs me that this one will be "poop."

This new child is fascinating, really, but I'm beginning to wonder what happened to Annabelle. Here today, gone tomorrow, I guess. 

Obviously I'm kidding, right? Annabelle is still with us and I don't look at her exploration of things as a danger to said things. Everything in our house is perfectly safe, though I ought to look into a less reactive strategy to preparing the environment.  It is true that I hardly recognize the girl. It has been a very exciting week! 

Tell me, what's new with you and your family? Have your children ever made such rapid and sudden leaps in development that you hardly recognized them from one day to the next?