Baby Girl is five months old.  She’s become a bit grabby, almost overnight.  She’s been using her hands to explore for a good while now, but where they have been a vehicle for exploring texture (scratching the surfaces of things, entwining fingers in her dad’s forearm hair ... OUCH!!) she is now delighting in the lessons inherent in reaching out and grasping.

The tricky part is that she’s right in that developmental window which so many babes pass through, where she can grab hold, but cannot yet let go.

Achingly resonant for this geeky Momma, whose role as a bereaved family member has similar parallels around knowing when to hold on, what to hold on to, and how to let go of the appropriate bits at just the right time.

Life, eh?  She’s got quite the dark sense of humour.

Anyhoo, a few links for a Thursday ... first, welcome to the website world, Pennie!  Great news: Pennie Brownlee now has a site.  A must-visit for all y’all baby enthusiasts. 

A couple of links for the list lovers out there: this is 11 ways you might be allowing your life to suck, and this Dumb Little Man site is a good time: just list-o-rama.  

Delicious news for baby advocates (and sensible humans) - the poppycock nonsense that is the Baby Can Read company has been run out of down and forced to cease trading. 

From the good folks at Future of Children comes this piece about the impact of childhood mental health challenges across the lifecourse, and here is an abstract for some new research about childhood obesity - GET OUT and PLAY!

Now, I’m gonna order some hi-larious buttons from DemocraticStuff.com.  Garden Gnomes for Obama, indeed!