Crawling

So what has our little cutie been up to recently? GROWING. That's what. The past couple of weeks she's discovered she can be mobile. And she gets very frustrated when she has to be stationary or can't reach something that's caught her attention. It's truly adorable to watch her drag herself across the floor and heartbreaking when she falls over.

She's got the talking thing down. She knows she can make noise and she enjoys doing so! Her babble has developed into a "ba ba" "ma ma" (So she'll say "mommy" first, right?!) "da da" along with lots of raspberries and coos. She still does sound exactly like a dove.

I'm thankful that about half the time I can leave her be and she'll entertain herself and the other half she wants to be around another human. When I'm in the kitchen and she's in her little play area I can hear her in there babbling to something and she'll get excited and squeal or yell. It melts my heart and makes me chuckle each and every time. I think I could listen to her babble all day long and not tire of it. When it turns from babble to fussing....well that's another story.

Fashion show time!!!

I call this her "tea" shirt. This is one of the items that Aunt Connie found. It's a shirt that's been stained with tea, then the lady embellishes the shirt with lace, flowers, buttons, etc. This shirt is still just a bit too big on her, but I wanted to get a picture of her in it anyway. It's adorable!

Here we have what I like to call the "Convenient" outfit. This girl goes through SO many outfits in a day that there are times I have trouble keeping up with the laundry. So here she's wearing a cute little summer outfit I found at a garage sale paired with a pair of pants that were hand-me-downs from Alana. (The pants have a shirt! she's just not wearing them in this picture).

I realized we'd run into a bit of a complication with her wardrobe. Unfortunately, she's learning to crawl during the summer. This means I tend to keep her in shorty outfits. The downside to that is that she's dragging/crawling around the house on the carpet and her poor little knees are getting carpet burn! I've been tempted to get those baby leggings that look like someone cut out the ends of socks and babies wear them on just their legs. They are ingenious to say the least. However, I don't want to pay for them and I also think they look really silly. So instead....I'll just buy her pants! She and I headed out to the consignment stores today to get some pants to save her poor baby knees from being burned.

The weekend before last she got to stay all night with her GramE and GrampE while Jason and I attended a concert. From what I can tell, they had a blast! Then, on a whim, I purchased another set of tickets and Jason and I attended another concert. This time she stayed with my Aunt Gail, Uncle Paul and Grandma Esche (which all the great-grand kids call "Gigi").

They apparently had a great time with her because Jason and I got a play by play of everything she'd done while staying all night. (I secretly think they had more fun than she did). Aunt Gail has been a Kindergarten teacher for 30+ years and did some analysis on her behavior while she was watching her. Apparently she's pretty impressed with the way Rachel is developing and the coordination she has. Great new to this mama's ears!!!

Saturday and Sunday this weekend we've actually stayed home and taken it easy. Rachel's been on another one of her "sleep most of the day" kicks....which means she stays up pretty late. Last night she didn't fall asleep until 10:30 and slept until 8AM. In my opinion, she's not doing a ton to wear herself out. So I'm going to chalk it up to another growth spurt.

You can see (if she'll let you look closely) that her second tooth on the bottom is starting to come in. I know that has to hurt, but so far this weekend I've not needed to use anything to give her relief. So I don't think this one's hurting quite as much. I'm hoping her teeth are going to come in slowly and not be as painful for her.

We saw today that she can pull herself up from the floor to her knees. Won't be much longer until she pulls herself to a standing position!

Friday when I went to pick her up she wasn't in her usual day care room. Apparently she's reached "big baby" status and was moved to the "Infant 2" room. The Infant 2 room is for babies, but for those that are starting to become mobile. The room has a mirror on the wall with a bar, similar to what you might see in a ballet studio. The difference is this one is very close to the floor and it's purpose is to help kids, like Rachel, who are trying to pull themselves up. When I went up to the other room to get her I was told that she'd had a very productive day and really liked the new room. I'm assuming that some kids don't take well to the sudden change. So I was really glad to hear this awesome news. Such a great kid!!!