The Ribbon-Chaser

When Stella was tiny I would lay her on my legs while I prayed the Office of Readings.

I am observing a moment of silence for those days.

This morning I set her on the floor by my feet and opened up the breviary. Her eyes lit up and she began inching toward it with the utmost determination. Must eat ribbons, she was saying plain as day. She can cover a lot of ground these days but not very purposefully. She rolls from side to side, and inchworms back and forth, and occasionally while she's rocking on her hands and knees she'll do a lurching half-crawl before she flops down on her belly again. I can't leave her in the middle of our king-sized bed anymore, because she'll zip over to the edge of it. (Zippiness is relative here. She is zippy compared to, say, a gastropod or a five-month-old. She can cover a surprising amount of distance in the time it takes a person to make a very speedy stop in the bathroom.)

She's better at distance than directionality, though. Forward motion, especially, is tricky. So this morning as I was reading the first psalm she was scooching and grunting and reaching and generally sounding frustrated, which prompted me to angle my leg absentmindedly behind her feet to give her something she could push against. That was all she needed to lunge forward and grab the breviary, crumpling the page in her dimpled hand.

I shook my head at my shortsightedness and traded her a Tintin book. (Tintin is all the rage in our house right now, as you can tell from this picture -- four boys, four Tintin books.)  No, thank you, she said -- plain as day again. Tintin books = no pretty ribbons. Yummy yummy ribbons.

Maybe a nice toy, I said, proffering one while discreetly moving the breviary to my other side. Nooooo, said Stella plain as day, bring back the ribbons please please.

In this fashion I eventually finished the Office of Readings. It was not what you'd call contemplative. But I can't really complain about being interrupted when the interrupter is this cute.

Comments

[Sarah @ This Heavenly Life]

Oh, sweet babies. Luckily, you can speak her language well enough to figure out the object of her slobbery desire :)

[Kira]

Sometimes I think you and I are living the same life - except for the getting things accomplished part. You: analyzing dissertation data! Me: thinking seriously about finishing my thank-you notes from the baby shower five months ago.
Nonetheless.
Raphael just informed me last week that he has finally read all the TinTin books, now that they finally got "King Ottokar's Sceptre" from the library. And my baby girl is a squirming inchworm of a book eater. Who communicates very clearly, thankyouverymuch.