Baby book entry #679 [update]:
Had to move new end tables from living room entirely.

Baby book entry #678:
Stella ate first Spam this week.

Baby book entry #679:
Stella has adapted new end tables as a “get up and over the arm of the couch quick” tool. Must move them.

So, when she is not pounding her head against the floor in a fit of rage, all the while screaming “nowaynowaynowaynoway,” Stella has been *very* busy building her vocabulary. Each day adding a few new words — mostly a reflection of what she hears us saying [note to self: keep sailor mouth shut!] Her enunciation could use some fine tuning, but overall *we* understand what she is saying, and are so much better able to interpret her needs and wants. This newly found ability to communicate with one another seems to, oddly enough, be at the heart of her ever increasing need to voice her displeasure with a given situation. Something to the effect of “you no longer have an excuse to not know what I am asking for, and therefore have no reason not to give it to me”

Case in point: Yesterday when we got home she immediately runs to the cupboard where the catfood is kept and says “titee, titee” (this is what I mean abou that enunciation thing). In essence, she is pointing to the cupboard, then pointing to the catfood dish — her eyes beckoning me to get the food down for her. In my mind, I quickly flash forward about 10 minutes to a vision of us being done “feeding the kitties” (read: playing in the catfood) and having to tell her we are done feeding the kitties and we have to put the food away, much to her dismay. Believe me, this is exactly where it would have gone. Instead, I decide to rationally and calmly tell her that the kitties have food and we don’t need to give them anymore and try distracting her to come help me get her bottle ready. Yeah, you can all guess how well that went over. It didn’t.

Along with learning just words and associations, she is also putting together some strings of words. Some, fairly straghtforward: mo beee (more please), others not so straight forward…

We — okay, okay, Steve –has been feeding the neighbors cats for the last week or so, with Stella usually getting to go along for the ride. Over the course of this time Stella comes back saying her usual ‘titee’ (kitty), but she has also picked up a couple of new words: ‘eat’ (with perfect clarity), and ‘white’ (also, perfectly dictated). This morning, however, she came in saying all three in various order until out of her mouth came, you guessed it: “eat white titee.” To any other parent out there, this may have been cute and clever, “oh look dear, she is putting words together,” but to us, it was downright hilarious. We both looked at each other and thought “great, our kid is heading off to day care this morning to tell everyone about eating a white cat.”

So let’s file this one under the “I will never…” category in my own rules and standards parenting manual (that, as you have probably figured out by now, has had about 600 pages ripped out).

With the remodel done, and the looming task of rebuilding our physical space to some sort of normalcy, we are yet again reminded of what they refer to in scientific journals (or at least should) as the ‘toddler effect’. It goes something like this: take the project’s overall hours in heretofore “normal” hours, multiply that by about 37, multiply that by 2, divide that by the cosine of the root of 76, then add 6. It is precisely this multiplier effect that calls for desperate measures…pulling out the big guns…calling in the cavalry, yes folks I parked her cute little butt in front of the TV. Out came the entire 12-volume DVD set of Baby Einstein, and the 2 High5 DVDs and her comfy ladybug chair and away we went.

Guilt demands that I find an upside; that I somehow make this an okay thing; that I rationalize it until I have actually turned it around to a *good* thing. No matter how hard I have tried, I just can’t reconcile the fact that a video is *good* because they teach the merits of exercise….while you are sitting on your butt watching it. There is also the trance-like affect that these videos have on her. No other television evokes the same intensity of engagement. It is like those perky faces on the other end are somehow beaming laser beams into her brain willing her to watch without blinking — the same way they are burning their inane songs into my subconscience. I wake up singing them, for God’s sake!

All of this evilness aside, Steve and I actually had an opportunity to work…side by side….for, like an hour at a time! If it wasn’t for that &$^% plumbing nightmare that surfaced Sunday morning, we actually would have really been able to get through one entire project. Instead, we are now halfway into about 3 — which, in our world is pretty damn awesome!