Desperately seeking sleep

Linden appears to be going through some serious development in all areas. She has suddenly learned to climb a full flight of stairs, take a few steps holding onto a push toy, stand independently long enough to clap twice, climb anything less than about 12 inches high, climb onto the rocking horse and rock like crazy on it, and basically do all sorts of things that we didn’t expect her to do at this age.

We are exhausted. Partly from chasing her around making sure she isn’t doing anything too dangerous, but partly because she also isn’t sleeping very well.

Besides all of this she seems to be trying to use words. I am pretty sure she has said “mama” a few times in reference to me. Maren heard it this afternoon and agrees that it is different than the ma ma ma she says all the time. I also think she has been trying to say Maren, ball, bear, book, and a few other things. I am always surprised when parents are 100% sure about their babies’ first words. It seems like babies have to try things out a lot of times before you can be certain they are saying things in reference to something. So I am not completely certain that Linden is actually using any of these words, but I am certain she is trying things out that are approximating language.

She seems to be having some emotional development too. She has been getting super angry lately. I was at a moms group this week and one of the other moms started laughing while Linden had her back to me. The mom said that Linden was making a super expressive angry face that you don’t often see on babies. Another baby was playing with one of her toys and apparently she didn’t like it.

With all this going on it’s no wonder that she isn’t sleeping but I really hope sleep settles down soon because we are so so tired.