Life is very strange when the most interesting person in the world is only coming up on her 14th birthday -- 14 months, that is.

[caption id="attachment_120" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="The Amazing Baby"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-120" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/madison-225x300.jpg" alt="The Amazing Baby" width="225" height="300" />[/caption]

This Thursday, Nov. 19th, my granddaughter Maddie will be one years and two months old. She's walking, displaying a fascinating variety of facial expressions and pulling books and DVDs off the shelves like mad.

The only thing she isn't really doing yet is talking.

We saw little Maddie and her parents last weekend, and we'll see them again in Washington, D.C., for Christmas. I know I'm acting like this is the first baby in the world -- after all, they're born every day and there might even be one somewhere as pretty or as smart as Maddie -- but you have to understand this is all a first for me.

I missed out on my own children's infancy, and I don't really remember much about my younger siblings at that age. I imagine I was a lot more preoccupied with my own life in those pre-puberty days.

With Maddie I heard her cry over the phone when she was 10 minutes old, and I held her in my arms when she was 10 days old. I have seen her numerous times since then, and what I haven't seen in person I've seen in the photos and the videos posted on Facebook.

I can hardly wait for her to learn to talk, to learn to read and write and all the other things that come along with childhood. My daughter Pauline tells me that Maddie already loves books, and I'm happy to know her parents intend to raise her on the written word and not on television.

Who knows? By the time she grows up, she might be the proverbial one-eyed person in the land of the blind when it comes to literacy.

Ho