Better than having a pet bird

The Jillian has learned how to crawl. She’s getting pretty good at it, as evidenced by the fact that I threw my back out yesterday the 123rd time I swooped in to re-direct her away from something she is not supposed to eat.

Our house, commonly known as Baby Danger Park, is not the best environment for crawling. In the dining room, there is quite a bit of space, but there is the step-down into the living room, which Jillian falls off of. This makes her angry and causes The Screaming, so we stay out of there for the most part.

The living room while smaller, has a thousand more interesting things that she is not supposed to eat. Start with the TV stand – buttons on the cable box, the satellite radio, and the CD player are all big favorites.

She also loves the vertical blinds, and I am constantly pulling those out of her hands. If we’re ever going to sell this place, I’d like the blinds to be intact, you know? Also attached to the back door is the giant dowel rod we use as the Safety Stick. You know, the thing that goes in the track of the door so no one can open the door that way? Well, Jilly thinks this is the Best Toy Ever and likes to bash the window with it.

The funniest thing about the crawling is watching her go through trial-and-error. Today, I was tapping away at the keyboard, watching her out of the corner of my eye when I heard “THUNK!…tap…THUNK!…tap tap…THUNK!”

Intrigued, I looked to see what she was doing and she was crawling into the sliding glass door, head-first. My goodness, but this child is funny. She couldn’t go any farther and couldn’t figure out why at first so she backed up and tried again, like a bird that doesn’t know what glass is and flies into windows.

A bird actually did that one day. Jillian was sleeping and it was all quiet in the house. I was at the keyboard (… duh) and I heard a CRACK! Sounded like a gunshot and took about six years off of my life. After I recovered from my heart-attack-cum-stroke, I looked outside and saw a ginormous crow on the patio, all dazed. I’m surprised it didn’t crack the window!

I don’t remember if crows are harbingers of death or if they just represent the soul after it has moved on, but I’m slightly nuts, so of course I had to go up and check on Jillian. I don’t put a whole lot of stock into omens and whatnot, but I don’t totally discount them, either.

As I’ve been writing this, Jillian has THUNK!ed into the door five more times. Either she hasn’t quite figured it out yet or she’s really really persistent.