The Ettafly emerges

Etta is now roughly around 7 and a half months old. It appears that the long period of counting your every waking existence in weeks and days has surreptitiously dissipated with no real fanfare, an indistinguishable time ago. I believe that obsessive need to know exactly what week and day you are at, with regards to gestation and the first few months of your child's life is a necessary survival technique born from boredom and then desperation.

The mind is now nicely filled with other stuff that is far more interesting! Such as wondering when your child will go from twerking on all fours to finally crawling (June the 26th for Etta Lee!) Predicting what the child will shove in her mouth that has happily languished upon the floor for weeks (months?) before hand (marbles, pins, LOOM BANDS, pebbles) then consciously attempting to rid the area of said hazards from now on with. Recent developments decree the removal of anything that can be pulled from a sofa/table/chair such as plates, cups, scissors, computers and cameras etc. due to baby pulling herself up on everything.

Etta Lee is danger baby of proportions never experienced before by daughter #1 and #2. She is mind-numbingly noisy, never-endingly shouting her distaste for something or perhaps chastising a cushion or giving a slice of banana a piece of her mind. She does not take kindly to being left alone for more than a nanosecond and does a disturbing line in sounding like she is possessed by Beezlebub making me utter the words more than once a day, GOD what have I done?? But she is great fun. You can see every expression that passes through her animated wee face and she loves a right guid luff.

As she crawls and cruises about her ever increasing world, her new found independence is apparent not only in her mobility but also her need for me. Once the beacon of her very existence, I now play more the role of favourite facilitator as she becomes aware of and forges different relationships with the people around her.

I do not lament that period of being the most important person in my babies life. In fact I embrace this more democratic distribution of affection as I find all that other stuff quite claustrophobic. I can now see many more options open up to us as a family once again, as the vice-like grip of an all-encompassing newborn eases and a proper wee forceful person emerges to join us.