Amelia is a different baby woman... compared to my last report anyway. On Thursday she will be ten months old!
Earlier this week, she progressed from that nebulous state where she can move, but not purposefully in the right direction, to where she can move in whichever direction she decides to go. Let the (more) chaos begin!
Well, of course, her first target was me. Once she succeeding in achieving this goal, she realized that she could go wherever she pleased... and thus, she immediately turned around and headed for our tall, rickety, overburdened bookshelf, babbling a triumphant "booh, booh, booh!" as she went. And proceeded to pull expensive (and fairly new) Brandon Sanderson novels off the bottom bookshelves. Before she destroyed all the dust covers and ate all the About the Author pages, I distracted her with board books (and grandma) and immediately set to packing all our books safely into boxes.
I suppose that if you were unfamiliar with the extreme ricketiness of our bookshelves and our plans to move in two months or so, this course of action might seem a little extreme.
Well, here was my course of logic.
The bookshelf in question was basically five planks with thick plastic sticks in between. Once the plastic sticks kind of screwed into the planks, but most of them were broken. Now though, if you were unbelievably unwise, you could pull out one of these plastic sticks and most of the bookshelf would collapse like a Jenga tower, only with books. Put a baby at the bottom, and we've got a major problem.
Well, of course, if I wanted to save the books, I'd have to relocate the ones on the bottom shelf or two. You can imagine though, how this would throw off the balance of the rickety bookshelf so that if you were to sneak up behind it and tap it on the shoulder, it would let out a pathetic "eep!" and then collapse. Again, pancake baby.
In general, I don't approve of pancake babies.
So, there was only one thing left to do... pack away all our books (except for the ones we planned to read during the next six months) and destroy the bookshelf. The poor creature was at the end of its life and would not survive another disassembly and reassembly.
Now, we have two bookshelves. Unfortunately, the second bookshelf--though sturdier than the rickety one aforementioned--is by no means a baby-safe furniture item. The designer did not have securing it to the wall in mind when he or she designed it. It is built in such a way that if we were to attempt securing it to the wall, and Amelia were to attempt scaling it, the backboard of the bookshelf would likely remain attached to the wall... and then the rest of the shelf and all its books would fall down on top of her. Boom, pancake baby.
So basically, I packed nearly the entirety of our book collection into boxes. I was surprised and disappointed to find it only filled six large boxes. The ones we left out would probably fill a small box. Clearly, we need more books. Donations are welcome. (Particularly if these donations come pre-packed away in boxes.)
As for the fate of the bookshelves... We will be giving away the less rickety bookshelf (anyone interested?), and the majority of the very rickety bookshelf went straight to the dumpster. It has lived a long and useful life. I think it belonged to Katie in one of its previous lives. But a piece of it lives on!
The rickety bookshelf has been repurposed into a baby bookshelf. It is now two planks with the four sturdiest plastic rods in between... and these all still have threading on them and can screw into the endpieces! Woohoo! It turns out that the rickety bookshelf's most recent incarnation is actually rather sturdy. Amelia has her very own shelf! She hasn't discovered it yet. Partly because we haven't put anything on it yet. I'll get around to it later in the week.
Besides using her newly-found mobility powers to attack the heebie-jeebies out of all our books, Amelia uses them to chase James. And sometimes me. But if James is home, mostly James.
Amelia is saying pseudo-words... semi-words? Half-words? Whatever. Not quite words. I am "muh", James is "duh", Becca is "buh", and books are "booh". I don't know when these sounds will morph into actual words, but I fear "book" may get the privilege of being her first word. Humph. I thought "mama" was supposed to the requisite first word. Oh well.
In any case, if her first word is "book", it would reflect the reality that Amelia is extremely fond of books. If presented with a large basket full of toys and a single book, she will dig out the book more often than not. I personally believe she is so good at fine motor skills because she decided she needed them in order to properly play with books--hold them, pick them up, open them, turn pages, etc. Amelia may have nearly forty books, possibly more. I haven't counted them, but she has lots. All of them are getting quite used... Her current favorites seem to be "Pat the Bunny", "Peek-a-Boo Bambi", "Goodnight Moon", and "Baby Day".
There are some indications that Amelia is beginning to understand English (and Serbian!) to some extent. She definitely knows what mom, dad, Becca, Grandma, potty, bonk, milk, and book mean. And she knows zvezde (stars) for sure, and possibly patka (duck). Oh, and possibly miš (mouse) and pas (dog) as well. Yikes, she is growing up!
Amelia finally sprouted a couple teeth (both lower central incisors) right around 9.5 months old. They are starting to be visible instead of just invisible sharp things in her gums. They haven't made much difference, except that I have to be careful if she smiles while still at the breast or I will get pinched. Ouch!
James and I decided yesterday to begin teaching Amelia in earnest how to fall asleep on her own. She has come to believe that she is incapable of falling asleep without a boob in her face. So I began the whole stealing-the-boob-just-before-she-falls-asleep, give-it-back-if-she-asks-for-it, steal-it-again-just-before-sleep-etc.-until-she-finally-surrenders-to-sleep-boobless routine. It took over TWO HUNDRED boob-steals and two hours before she finally gave up and fell asleep without the boob. (She began screaming bloody murder after every steal... then she'd anticipate a thievery and begin screaming bloody murder BEFORE I even stole it... and then she decided to give up on a nap despite being tired as heck... and played for a few minutes... and then decided she really did need to sleep... then about fifteen more boob-steals and she finally slept. Woo! What a process.) The next time only took about a hundred times. Once she let go and fell asleep before I even stole it. The last time today probably only took thirty tries. What improvement! I am pleased. After phase one is complete, I will crack down on sleeping alone during the daytime. Le gasp!
Love and thievery,
Jenna and Amelia
