When Nilla was a little pup, exploring the world and learning to play, she would occasionally grab her favorite toy of the moment and, after giving it a shake, she’d flip it lightly into the air to land just a few inches away.

Aww.  Cute.

As she’s gotten older, however, she’s gotten stronger.  Her once adorable habit of tossing has turned into a habit of throwing.  Ocassionally, hurling.  And her aim has improved.

Or not, depending on how you look at it.  I can think of one candleholder in particular that would disagree if he were still around to speak of it today.

A moment, please.

It first became apparent to us that our kid had a real talent (or issue) when she managed to accomplish this.

To give you some sense of scale, Nilla weighs less than ten pounds and is maybe a foot in height.  That bookcase?  It’s more than six and a half feet tall.

(By the way, that lamb has been up there for probably close to a year now.  At this point we’re just too afraid of the dust that’ll come with it when it’s finally brought down.)

Then, one morning, Chris called to me from the bathroom.  “Come here!  You have to see this.”  [Insert potty joke here.]  Certain it would be something totally unworthy of my time, I rolled my eyes and shuffled in.   I never would have expected what I found.

A truly horrific end for that poor, poor monkey.

And one day there was this.

Slam dunk with a skunk. Don’t you love how she’s standing there waiting for me to get it for her?

And a few weeks ago, she pulled off this one…

…nearly launching her toy straight through our narrowly open window.  It would have gone out too if it weren’t for the book holder (that doesn’t work so now we use it as a sculptural element) on our window sill.

I have to admit, this one cracked me up.  The thought of someone walking by below and this ratty purple dog toy falling from the sky and landing at their feet was just too much.  But it gets better.

On Sunday, I decided to take my coffee out onto the balcony so I could enjoy the gorgeous weather while making a Mother’s Day call to my mom.  Nilla loves the balcony, so she followed along.  As she often does, she popped back into the house a couple times and selected toys to bring out and chew on.  I wasn’t more than a few minutes into the conversation with my mom when she finally did it.  She picked up her ducky and…..

Let me give you a better idea of what you’re seeing here.  At the bottom of the photo are the railings of our balcony.  You can see my lettuce seedlings peeking through; I’d just watered them.  If you look up to the very top of the photo, that’s the sidewalk in front of our building.  The little fenced in area just below the sidewalk is a ground floor community patio area.  Got it?  Now, do you see it?

Here let me help you out.

Now?  Alright, let’s zoom it in–SVU style.

That yellow spot right there, that’s her ducky.  Yup, without any warning, in one swift motion, she flung it off of the balcony and onto that patio.  After which she stood there and looked at me like, “You’re gonna go get that, right Mom?”  Of course, baby.

And then I made Daddy go get it.  It was Mother’s Day, after all.