16 Months, 1 Week and a Day

Yep, that's how old she is on this very special day when she is WALKING! On her own! Not holding anyone's finger! As you can see from the pictures, she's VERY pleased with herself and so is her mommy! I was truly worried she still wouldn't be walking at her 18 month appointment and that her pediatrician would be trying to break it to me gently that she needed physical therapy. Huge twin sighs of relief and joy!

In case you're wondering why the comforter from our bed is on the living room floor, here's the story. For the past couple of weeks Maria has been enjoying attempting to walk on our bed in the mornings as her tired parents try and get a few more minutes of shut eye. I think the appeal is that it's soft and so falling doesn't hurt. She sits between us, pulls up to standing and then bounces or maybe takes a step or two before collapsing in a giggling heap. Since she frequently falls on Daddy or Mommy, we've been joking that she's perfecting some new wrestling moves like the "Dupa Drop" (If you don't know what a dupa is, go find someone of Polish descent and they'll enlighten you!).

Today she wanted to walk around on the bed in the middle of the day but I figured with just one parent the chance that she'd fall off the bed was just too high. So I brought the pillows and comforter down to the living room floor and make a sort of bed-like environment, supplemented with pillows from the couches. And it worked spectacularly well! Maria must have decided that falling down on the comforter in the living room wouldn't hurt too badly and she just took off walking and walking and walking. She went to bed early tonight!

Missed Milestones & Inoculating Children Against Advertising

Maria will be 16 months old on Sunday and she (STILL!) doesn't walk on her own. I remember when she was just a newborn and it seemed like she'd hit milestones weeks or months early. And now with the whole walking thing I'm finding it difficult to say the least. When I'm not with her, the question I get right after "How old is she?" is the "She must be walking now" one. Sometimes it's not even a question, but a statement! If I were truly a Mom of the Year, my child would not only be walking by now, but she'd have taught all her stuffed animals to walk, too!

Hopefully she will be walking soon, but for now I'm left with the unmet expectations of countless acquaintances and friends, a cranky child who wants to be independently mobile but isn't and a rather sore back from stooping over slightly while Maria holds my finger while she walks! If nothing else this has been a learning experience. (1) Never ask anyone if her or his child is _____ing yet and (2) Leave babies on the floor until they spontaneously get themselves up and start walking or you might be in for months of a back pain! (Note: If you're under 5 feet tall, #2 might not apply.)

On a completely different note, here's another interesting article about children and advertising. The author's not-yet-reading son asked if she was going to buy Chlorox at a grocery store which is a product she rarely buys. This goes to show how insidious advertising really is! I can remember as a child seeing just one ad for a Slip-N-Slide and I absolutely HAD to have one. My parents, as usual, refused to buy it and eventually my sisters and I created a makeshift one out of a sheet of plastic and a sprinkler. This article has some ideas (beyond the simple I'm-not-going-to-waste-my-hard-earned-money-on-that-piece-of-junk! technique) on how to nurture in your children a healthy skepticism for advertising.

Mathematicians, Physicists, Grocery Carts and Liars

I'll bet you're just wondering how these topics can possibly relate! I figure since I haven't blogged in such a long time I'd better come up with a catchy title.

As a mathematician married to a physicist I thought I'd share this comic that shows clearly which field is best!

As for grocery carts, Mark and I decided to run errands WITH Maria yesterday instead of having one person stay home with her supposedly freeing up the other to run errands more efficiently. Thanks to the prevalence of shopping carts at Lowe's, Sam's and Meijer, we all had an amazingly wonderful trip. Maria, who is very close to walking independently, still likes to hold onto a finger or a couch or, as it turns out, a shopping cart! When she discovered that she could push a huge, fully-loaded shopping cart and make it move all by herself, it was a moment of pure joy! She happily pushed the cart through Lowe's and then Sam's and finally Meijer, with a little steering help from mom and dad and lots of amused looks and smiles from fellow shoppers at seeing this 22 pound shortie throwing all of her weight into moving a gigantic cart! I have to say this was probably the funnest errand run I've even been on!

And finally, Mark sent me a link to this interesting article about children and lying. Fascinating stuff! Apparently learning to lie early (age 2) is a sign of intelligence because one needs to construct a plausible alternate reality. Researchers theorize that children learn to lie by watching their parents - ouch! Sometimes we even prompt them to lie such as: "Now tell Aunt Hilda how much you love the bar of soap she got you for your birthday." I think the thing that surprised me most was research showing that in families where there are more arguments between teens and parents, the teens actually respect their parents more! It's a case of attempting to change a parent's mind about a rule versus simply lying to them to avoid detection and punishment.