A post about Madeline. How strange...

Hi there. Apparently blogging at the beginning of a month is a drag for me. This time, though, I have an excuse. Well, let's face it. I always have an excuse. I'm pretty good at excuses. Or rather, Madeline is good for excuse making. This week, she has learned to open doors. Which means I can no longer contain her in one part of the house without locking her in. And she has no qualms about being on a different floor from me any more. She has also learned to move kitchen chairs, invert laundry baskets, and climb on garbage cans. Before, when I was taking a shower, she was content to wreak havoc in her room only. Now I have to scrub down in two minutes flat and run downstairs to pull her out of the pantry, where she is arranging the graham crackers and pouring sprinkles from the top shelf on the floor. Naturally, the pantry door has no lock. (On an unrelated note, do you think I could put her destructive powers to good use by letting her grind the graham crackers into a liquid and marketing it as white gourd juice?) Other fun things she has been doing: trying to wash dishes when I'm not looking, going through all of our filing cabinets, trying to put on my makeup, eating glue sticks, spilling M&Ms, snorting baby powder, and trying to take her baby on walks through the neighborhood unescorted. When she's not trying to get Mary Poppins into the DVD player, of course.

So you can see that there is not much time for blog writing in between chasing my daughter out of the street, cleaning up water on the kitchen floor, hiding pens that had previously been hiding on high counters, and sorting papers and pictures that are in creative patterns on the floor. Until I go so crazy I give in and put Mary Poppins on so that Madeline will sit still for an hour and I can read a book and enjoy sitting on my new couch. My new couch is my happy place. It is ridiculously comfortable. Come visit me and sit on it. Although I must warn you, you may pay for the pleasure by getting to watch Mary Poppins. I sincerely hope you like English accents. Cheerio!