Boing! Boing! Boing!

Juliette is full of surprises. It seems that she’s had yet another firmware update from the Space Aliens and the new features are beginning to be activated.

This week she’s starting to do squats, excitedly jumping up and down, up and down for minutes on end. All this while I have my hands under her armpits to keep her balanced. I’m not lifting her at all – she’s using her massive turkey-thighs to power herself. It’s like she’s doing the Russian dance. Boing! Boing! Boing! and Boing! again. She kind of reminds me of some manic jack-in-the-box toy. No way I could do that many squats with that speed and not be exhausted after 5 or 10 repetitions. But baby Juliette can handle dozens of them in a row, for up to 10 minutes at a time! With the world’s biggest shit-eating grin you can imagine all the while.

I attribute this change to her playing in the Exersaucer. She positively loves that Exersaucer, gnawing on all the little attachments and happily banging away on the deck. Loves to drool all over it too – attested by the pools of drool that we regularly have to wipe up after she’s done.

But back to the power-squats – because the Exersaucer is spring-loaded, she’s able to push up with her toes and then bounce up and down in the seat. I think that’s where she’s learned how to do these squats and that she likes them. We just recently had to raise the Exersaucer to the middle level as she’s growing so fast that she was able to stand flat-footed on the base when in the seat. We were worried that with her new-found jumping ability she might propel herself too high and end up hurting herself.

So now the ritual is that after I change her diaper she pushes herself to a standing position with me keeping her balanced. And then she does her squats over and over, pleased as Punch. She will also do the same squats and jumps when she’s being held, only this time with her feet on my lap. Occasionally she kicks me in a rather sensitive area – smiling away – reminding me that perhaps this is not such a safe activity. For Becoming A Dad, not her.