Allison spotlight

Three weeks ago (on Nicole's birthday), we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and Allison's uncle sat her on the floor with a giant, solid glass ball in front of her.  Just as if it were another baby toy, Allison surprised everyone by lifting the ball straight to her face to taste it.  The ball was 2 lbs 10 oz (and 4 inches in diameter), so with Allison weighing 16 pounds, it was a sixth of her body weight.  I imagine it was the equivalent of me lifting a very heavy bowling ball.  "She's strong!" we exclaimed.

Another Allison story.  At the family reunion a week ago, my cousin and her husband were singing a song together for a little talent show.  We sat in the front, and I set Allison on the living room floor.  She crawled toward them, and then their song ended, and she turned her body back and looked toward me.  The large room echoed with the sound of clapping as everyone applauded for my cousin and her husband.  Allison's eyes widened and a big smile spread across her face; her head shook excitedly slightly from side to side as she took in the sound of the applause and the many happy faces directed at her.  Energized, she quickly pattered back to me, her face glowing with glee.

One more interesting observation about Allison:  Her approach to goals is straight lines, head first.  If she sees something she wants, and there's something blocking her way, she doesn't go around that thing.  She goes over it or straight through it.  If she's on the couch and sees the remote controls on the ground, she just dives head first off the couch.  I've caught her by the foot a couple times before she crashed headfirst, and one or two times, she has crashed.  Tim's family were cracking up last week when Allison apparently saw something she wanted when she was under the table, and crawled over the matrix of bars under the table to get to it.  If you're in her way, she will crawl over you.  Whether it's your face, your eyes, your neck (it was Daddy's neck today) - it doesn't matter.  You can't get in the way of Allison's single-minded determination.  We've barricaded the living room with giant pillows to keep her away from the computer, but our feeble attempts to beat back the beast have apparently backfired, as Allison's confidence in her ability to scale large objects has flourished.  She energetically climbs the pillows and joyfully plunges face first on the other side, almost as if the purpose of the pillows was to augment her enjoyment of the challenge.  Sometimes, because she can't be contained, we put her in her exersaucer, or "baby jail," as we call it.  The other day, Tim found her leaning over and trying to pull herself out of it.  Is someone a little self-assured?  Today, in an attempt to trap Allison in my brother's living room so I could work on the yard, I laid the piano bench on its side to block the exit.  My sister-in-law was stuck on the couch nursing her son, and from the other room, I heard her shout, "No, Allie!  No, no!"  I returned to the living room to find Allison hanging on her belly halfway over the piano bench, her feet dangling in the air behind her.

When Allison breaches the barriers and crawls under the computer desk, I remind her, "No Allie!"  She giggles and scurries away from me, feverishly causing as much destruction as she can before the clock runs out.  We've had to put a table in front of the TV so Allison won't beat it with her hand.  The other day, we stopped her and put something in her way.  She found her way back to the TV, lifted her hand, and, with a big, expectant smile, turned her head toward Daddy, waiting for him to react.  Cheeky...cheeky baby.