Tuesdays with Sadie

Right now the little minx is in the throws of developing a bit of an attachment to her parents. While it seems as though it would be inimitably charming to have such a cute little rascal scurrying after you, albeit at a rather slow rate, it turns out to be a bit of an annoying kind of charm. A bit like the attentions of an unwanted admirer. Though flattered, it is not entirely welcomed.

Though I'd been fairly certain that the little devil had been developing this propensity for the chase it was not until today when I stepped away to momentarily relieve myself, while lil s was lying on the floor in the middle of the carpet playing with her giraffe, which she tends to bite on in such a way as to bring to mind a lioness on the savanna, only to arrive back downstairs to find her whining to herself and attempting to lift herself up the stairs. Charming though the act was, it is more troubling when she bawls her head off when I leave the room to warm up her milk. Apparently she regards that simple act, despite my assurances to her which I assure you are to the contrary, as tantamount to abandonment, and I've no doubt that at some point in my life she'll go to a Freudian psychiatrist and unearth these kitchen abandonment's and blame her unhappiness on none other than her father. (As I write she's sort of moaning herself to sleep or deciding that sleep is untenable).

The whole thing is strange. I'll leave her playing in the living room, and she'll show up a few seconds later, dragging herself across the floor to reach me. The whole scenario is actually a bit like a movie about a psychopathic killer because she drags her feet on the ground wounded buddy green army man style and pulls herself along on the floor with her hands, which results in a slapping type noise on the pergo flooring. This constant slapping, coupled with her heavy breathing/whining as she comes at me from the other room is borderline horrifying. It's just that instead of an axe wielding psychopath I see a two and half foot tall baby smiling up at me. Although lately she sometimes eschews the smile and crawls all the way into the kitchen with me and proceeds to but up against my legs like a house pet that needs attention. Also, she's probably harboring deep desires to cut me with an ax for leaving her behind.

At around five o'clock after spending the whole day as the wounded buddy lil s starts screaming at the top of her lungs for no discernible reason. I'm not talking unhappy screaming, just wild screaming. It turns out that a baby can scream pretty loud, and it's a bit annoying. I try to let her know that we reserve that sort of screaming for the prow of the Titanic and the Grand Canyon but to no avail. She just loves to scream.

The one plus in terms of development that we've seen is that we realized that the little clicking noise that she'd begun making is almost exactly the sort of noise that lips make when giving her a kiss. Thus, she's imitating a kiss from her mommy and daddy. Granted she doesn't actually give us a kiss back yet, but it's pretty damn cute to give her a kiss on the cheek and hear her make the little noise in kind. The important part is that she recognizes that she's loved. Even if I do wish she'd stop loving me so much and go play with her toys.