My 9-month-old daughter Maddie is suffering from an acute case of grabtism. Grabtism is the wild compulsive disorder that forces the baby to latch on to anything that catches her fancy.
One of the telltale signs of this affliction is chronic hair pulling. Nine out every ten times my wife leans down to pick up the baby, her hair gets a painful reminder of Maddie’s grabtism.
Maddie also has quite an eye for expensive sunglasses. Whether they are on your head or hanging from your shirt, she is always ready to strike. She snatches them without warning and the celebrations start immediately. Maddie waves the stolen glasses in front of your face forgetting the fact that you were just wearing them.
Other favorite targets for Maddie include zippers, strings and buttons attached to clothing. She zooms in and grabs hold for all she is worth. And Maddie is not a girl who takes kindly to the word no. Trying to liberate your piece of clothing from her clutches often time melts into a life and death struggle for supremacy.
One of Maddie’s favorite targets is little insignias or designs on shirts. She goes wild-eyed whenever she catches a glimpse of an Izod alligator. She will lunge from virtually any position to corral the gator and try to pry its head off. This is usually a painless exercise unless she manages to hook some chest hair living underneath the relative safety of the shirt
Anything that is not nailed down is fair game for the princess and we have no idea how to slow down these grabtastic tendencies. We may never know what drives this impulsive behavior, but both baby and parent are honing their reflexes and hand eye coordination a little more each day. But in contests such as these, there is rarely a clear cut winner.
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