How to drive your mamala over the edge in 10 simple steps

1. Wake up at 5:15 in the morning. Refuse to go back to bed.
2. Eat next to nothing for breakfast, so you're both tired AND hungry.
3. Ask to go down for a nap at 9:30, stay quiet in your room just long enough to convince the mamala that you're actually sleeping, then shatter those illusions after 25 minutes by shouting "MAAA! MAA! MAAAAA!" until she comes in and get you.
4. Refuse to get out of your crib so you can get dressed and changed like a normal person.
5. When the mamala decides it's not worth fighting over and begins changing you in your crib, pee all over the sheets in the 1.5 seconds your butt is bare between diapers.
6. When the mamala takes you out of your crib to change the sheets, run into the bathroom (foolishly left open) and throw a highlighter into the toilet.
7. While the mamala is taking the highlighter out of the toilet, run into the sunroom and start playing with the container of screws and other choking hazards daddy has left on the desk.
8. When the mamala takes the choking hazards away from you, run BACK into the bathroom (still open) and start dumping Q-tips into the toilet.
9. Once the mamala has finally gotten a grip and closed the damn doors and brought you into her room while she gets dressed, somehow find a random cough drop from god knows where (under the bed? behind the lamp?) and try to eat it, wrapper and all.
10. Insist on going downstairs all by yourself, giving your mamala several strokes as you teeter and totter all the way down.

And that was just up to 10:30 am. I'm pretty sure the mamala is going to need a beer before the day is done.

Maturations

The Hatchling is now officially word-crazy, having added such words and phrases as "Go, Car, Go!" (a favorite book), "feet" (sounds like 'phweet!'), shoe, nose, Oma, down, outside, all done and cookie to her ever-burgeoning vocabulary. Two cute things about that: one, she's developed a pattern of asking what a thing is, and then once you tell her, she waves at it and says "hi." It goes like this:

Hatchling: 'Sat? 'sat? 'sat? (what's that?)
Squab: That's your baby-doll.
Hatchling (face lighting up): Hiiiiiiii, beee! ("Bee" is how she says "baby.")

Two, she's lately started calling Mr. Squab "D." She's perfectly capable of saying "Daddy" - it's one of her few two syllable words - but apparently she's now too hip and cool for that. So when Mr. Squab gets home, she's all, "Hiiiiiii, D! Hiiiiiii, D! Hiiiiiii, D!" Which is, you know. Pretty cute.

But. Proud as we are of her increasing linguistic abilities, she's recently manifested a skill that eclipses even speech in her father's eyes. To wit: yesterday, her cousin, E, was spending the day with her and my mom. E, like Mr. Squab, likey the video games, and usually when he comes over he spends a good chunk of time on the Wii or the PS3. In the afternoon he took a break for lunch or something and after a while he and Oma heard odd noises from the TV in the living room. The TV itself was off, but the Hatchling had gotten hold of the PS3 controller, turned on the game system, and - blind - started "playing" a race-car game that Mr. Squab recently downloaded. "When we turned the TV on, she was on level 4," reported E. "I haven't even hit level 4 yet!"

I admit that I'm not quite sure whether to be impressed or slightly horrified by this, but Mr. Squab has no such dilemma. "That's my girl," he responded when we came home last evening from ECFE and the Hatchling plopped herself down in her toddler-sized chair, demanded the controller, and turned on the PS3 again.

"That's my girl."