Norah digs the big "O"

Oh, please, people, keep your minds out of the gutter. All will be revealed!

So this has become my day with Demon Child #2. She has, as I mentioned, begun standing, and since then she has begun cruising quite well around the furniture. Once I put Mia to bed in the afternoon for her nap, Norah and I begin the fun!

She sits in the living room and plays with some toys. Usually she chews on some for a while (she now has five teeth and is getting her eye teeth), but loses interest pretty quickly. Then she crawls into the dining room and around the corner into the kitchen. Krys bought a toy that is magnetic and sticks to the refrigerator, so she plays with that a bit. I call her name, which makes her giggle and crawl away, in the hopes that Daddy will come after her. She crawls through the kitchen and into the family room, where we have more toys. She is fascinated with Mia's gait trainer and often pulls herself up on that or the back door. We have a large cat stand next to the back door, and she is fascinated by that as well. When I join her I sit in the chair at the desk and watch. Occasionally she'll come over, pull herself up by the arm, and either look up at me and giggle or look at me and cry (if she's tired). Occasionally she'll go through her crawl tube. Then it's off down the hall!

I follow her down the hall and into the back areas of the house. Sometimes she'll go into our bedroom, where we have some plastic keys and a cookie jar with cookies in it. She chews on the cookies, wanders into the bathroom, and sits around. Or she'll crawl into her bedroom, which she really likes, apparently. There she does any number of fun stuff. First, she grabs a hold of her crib, pulls herself up, and reaches for her blanket. She loves her blanket. She will pull at it and occasionally she'll pull it onto the floor, but usually she can't quite get it through the bars. Then she'll focus in on another favorite toy - the Discovery Ball!

For those of you who are unaware of the myriad number of toys that are available to children and are therefore clueless about the Discovery Ball, allow me to explain. It is a globe mounted on two props, with the alphabet on it along the "equator." When spun, the ball plays music. It also plays music for each individual letter, and Norah has learned that when she presses the "O" "Old McDonald" will play. For some reason she loves this tune. She will spin it sometimes, but if the "O" does not come back, she will spin it until the finds it, then press it and bop gleefully. It's quite interesting to watch. She'll sit there for a while, completely entertained.

She is also very keen to walk, and whines a lot when she can't figure it out. She zips around the coffee table in the living room, picking stuff off the table, examining it briefly, and then throwing it on the floor. When there's nothing left she'll look at me, indignant, and whine. I tell her that she might not want to throw stuff on the floor, but as yet she doesn't understand me.

A nice thing about all this cruising (well, besides the obvious, that it's what she's supposed to do) is that we are teaching her the word "no." I have probably mentioned this before, but it's difficult teaching Mia "no" because she doesn't really do very much, so it's hard to find things she's doing wrong. We want to teach the kids the word (I have mentioned before on my other blog that many of the high school kids I teach don't appear to have ever heard it before) so that they aren't, you know, evil, and Norah is giving us ample opportunity. If she gets toward something that is off-limits, we say her name and then "no." She knows exactly what it means, which is cool. Most of the time she'll stop, look at us, cry for a second, but then move on. I've not had to intervene very much, which is very neat. We hope that despite her whining, she will learn quickly what is verboten and what is not. I know she is going to vex me often over the next 17 years, but I hope that it's not because of my inadequacies.

Soon she will be walking on her own. It's fun right now, and I'm sure it's just going to get more so!