"If I can throw this hula hoop onto the chimney, you'll give us our house back."

Abbie’s latest fascination is with dropping things. It seems that she is still discovering that when you hold an object over a precipice, and let go of that object, gravity will inevitably take hold of the object and pull it to the ground, or at least the nearest object capable of supporting its weight. This is just one of the many inevitabilities she can learn about life, like she will inevitably run out of food on her plate if she keeps eating, or George Lucas will inevitably repackage his Star Wars movies on DVD yet again to make even more money, or if a player is a starting pitcher for the Cubs, he will inevitably be hurt.

Fortunately, it appears that she only drops things when she’s bored. If she threw any object as soon as I placed it in her hands, life with her would be extremely difficult (more so). A prime time for boredom is when she’s imprisoned in the child seating area of a shopping cart while I search for groceries. She hates being buckled in behind the handlebars more than Tom Cruise hates antidepressants. The only way to placate her is to distract her with books and toys. Even Abbie can only look at a picture of a tortoise for so long, though, and when she loses interest, she shows it by dropping her book onto a floor that is likely crawling with a number (68,354,032,168) of harmful germs. At that point I have to give her something new to play with, say her fish rattle or a bag of frozen peas, because she will immediately throw the book again if I try giving it back to her.

Another favorite throwing time is when she’s trapped in her crib during naptime. She hates being caught behind those crib bars more than Corey Patterson hates drawing walks. To help pass the time until we rescue her, she likes to throw the objects that we loving placed inside her crib for various reasons, like her stuffed animals for comfort, her sheep blanket for warmth, and her burp cloth for shredding with her teeth. Sometimes I’ll walk into her room to wake her, and her crib will be completely devoid of all foreign objects. This can be extremely frustrating for her to be able to see an object, to want an object, but have that object just out of reach, which is exactly how I view a full night’s sleep. Sometimes she even manages to pull a bib off the rocking chair next to her crib so she can throw that too. We have a couple of hanging toys that play music when pulled tied to her crib, and those can be thrown over the side without falling to the ground. In fact, they can be pulled down, and will slowly pull themselves back up while playing music. This gravity-defying feature may be confusing to Abbie, kind of like how the occasional valid Ben Affleck wedding rumor confuses us all.

Abbie also uses her throwing powers while tied down (do you see the pattern here?) in her high chair, specifically to tell me she’s finished trying to eat whatever foul substance I’ve placed in front of her. This allows her to communicate effectively with her caregivers without having to demean herself by using speech. You may think this would make a horrible mess, but she never has the opportunity to throw anything messier than a pea or green bean. Clean finger foods are the only thing she has access to for self-feeding since she’s too young to use utensils and too prissy to messy up her fingers. My dog’s willingness to eat anything that finds its way onto the floor ensures that I never have to clean up after her. This gives me more time to lovingly restock Abbie’s crib, and to tenderly disinfect the toys that found their way onto the supermarket floor.