Newton’s First Law of Motion states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

Apparently, he’s met my daughter Cora.

I’m telling you, I cannot stop this child. It was bad enough that she started crawling and pulling herself up so early, but then came the cruising around, looking for something else to hold onto to keep her moving forward. And now, she’s fashioned herself a home-made walker.

Since moving to Texas we’ve been “church shopping” on Sundays – going to a different church every week as we try to find our new parish home. We’re enjoying seeing the different types of churches out there, but it also means Maddie is in a new environment every week. How’s she handling it?

It’s a bit mixed.

Maddie entered the “why” phase a few months ago, but Brian swears she has gotten significantly worse – er, more intense – over the past few weeks. Thankfully we haven’t hit too many of those really difficult “why” questions, like, “Why is the sky blue? Why is Daddy a boy?” but even the ones we can answer are exhausting.

I try hard to follow her “why” lines of questioning all the way to a satisfactory end, but they’re often thrown in with several other tasks simultaneously and I have to confess my patience runs thin. When I’m trying to wrestle a screaming Cora into her clothes for the day, discussing it calmly with Maddie isn’t always at the top of my “fun” list.

Proving once again that no two siblings are alike, Cora is going through a phase Maddie simply never experienced – the Human Carpet Cleaner.

I don’t know what it is with this child, but I am convinced that at least part of the reason Cora is crawling so early is that she sees an attractive paint chip across the floor and simply must have it in her mouth. ANYTHING on the floor is fair game, provided it is 1) dangerous, and 2) not generally considered food to humans. Meaning, that triple-A battery is fair game, but she’ll pass right over a green bean.