Sunday, August 30, 2009

I Scream For Ice Cream


Myrna's getting grabby. She's learned to climb, which has greatly improved her reach, and completely changed the landscape of the livingroom for her. Now she can pull toys off the shelf, though they tend to fall onto her head. We've had to remove all the magazines from the coffee table, and now just place junk mail there for her to find and destroy. Laptop chargers, a continued attraction for her, have nowhere to hide, but they do get their revenge. Our Mac chargers use magnetic connectors, the idea being that, if you trip over a cord, the charger will disconnect rather than yanking your laptop off the table. But this also means that small people who use stretched cords as climbing supports end up kissing the carpet.

All of this has meant further childproofing around the house. We've felt the real toll, however, on our regular ice cream runs. We've become pretty friendly with an ice cream joint maybe a ten minute walk from our place. Conveniently enough, it's next door to our regular source for diapers and baby food, so we find ourselves lining up for cones at least three times a week. From time to time, I've let Myrna sample some. This week, though, there hasn't been much choice in the matter. Thursday, Kelly carried Myrna in the Baby Björn. We got our cones and, after her longing stares went ignored, Myrna attacked Kelly's ice cream with a two handed grab - gripping the cone with her right, and smearing ice cream with her left. Then, each time Kelly went for a bite, Myrn pulled forcefully at her wrist, so that she could get a taste first. And by "taste," I mean ravenous, greedy chomp, each bite approached with the fear that it might be her last. It'd be one thing if this was, say, banana ice cream. But Kelly was eating ginger caramel ice cream, and Myrna couldn't get enough. Today I got the same treatment. I was able to keep my ice cream out of Myrna's immediate reach, but the tugs on my arm were stern and surprisingly powerful. I held her off until the screaming began. It was clear that she felt she some claim on my two scoops.  As the picture can attest, she won this battle. 

2 comments:

Barbara Jabbusch said...

Can't wait to share our ice cream too with the little munchkin - isn't that what good grandparents are for?

Anonymous said...

I remember Chris's first ice cream. His grandparents, in town for a visit, bought ice cream cones for all of us on the Ave. We figured we'd eat them while walking back to the parking lot. Chris screamed whenever he was out of reach of the ice cream -- forcing Grandpa to walk backwards the entire way and feed it to him -- with that tiny spoon they give you for free at the shop. He was 13 months old.