A First Giant Step...

You read the title right: Our girl is starting to walk! Oh the gigantic leap this beautiful little baby has made in her life! It happened last Saturday, November 5. She stood up on her own in the middle of the living room next to me, so I scooted back where I was sitting on the floor and coaxed herl. Sure enough, she took a step towards me, and every day since then she's taken at least one step. Last night she took 2 all on her own!! Soon she'll be tottering around on both legs instead of on all fours. I'm so excited for our little one.

This past Tuesday I had my very first parent teacher conference. Turns out, it was the teacher's first PTC as well! We had a great conversation and I'm so excited about Rachel's progress there. She's social, happy, and developing beautifully. I was also told that it's time for Rachel to transition from the Infant 2 room to the toddler room. In order for this to happen, all children must:
- Wear shoes every day
- Walk reasonably well
- Take one nap a day (from 12 - 2:30)
- Eat table food well

The only item from the above list she will struggle with is the one nap a day. Currently I've just let her sleep whenever she's tired. And why not? Forcing her into a strict routine will cause so many problems down the road if our plans suddenly change (which they do often). I've not wanted her to be on a strict schedule as a baby. Now we'll be working to move her naps to the middle of the day. And if that's the biggest transition she needs to make to qualify? I'll take it. They began the "transitioning" of her nap schedule on Wednesday and today I received the following picture from the Day Care Director:

Her note read "So.....I think the nap time is catching up with her". I laughed so hard! I can't get this child to hardly lay down to go to sleep, let alone fall asleep somewhere other than her crib!

Rachel refuses baby food. She doesn't want to be fed, she wants to feed herself. So table food from now on it is! She does still take a bottle (which she insists on holding herself). This is awesome. Her teacher says that there are some kids that are over a year old and still don't do table food, and here Rachel will only eat table food. And she eats everything! Apparently yesterday she had 2 pieces of pizza. And regularly eats seconds. On Tuesday evening I stopped and got Taco Bell for our visit with my Grandma and she ate almost an entire taco on her own! I'm so proud of her.

She has started pinching, and I'm not thrilled with this development. If you pick her up, she'll grab a handful of your shirt to hang on to while you hold her. However, sometimes her hand will move and she ends up grabbing your skin with her thumb and index finger. Even if I keep her nails trimmed it still hurts!!

Her teacher also says she thinks Rachel will be a "girly girl", which thrills me. Not that there's anything wrong with her being any other way....but she loves dolls. LOVES them. She likes to gently pull books off of the shelf and sit and turn the pages on her own. Sometime she'll "talk" or coo as she does this and it almost looks like she's "reading" it. She doesn't like it when the other kids get rowdy, she likes it when they are calm. And when she has to be around the baby infants in the Infant 1 room, she's so very gentle with them.

I was also told that the teacher who runs the Toddler room had mentioned to Rachel's current teacher that she's excited for Rachel to transition up so she'll be in the new teacher's room because "She's so cute!" Now how good do you think that makes this mother feel? That teachers are already excited to have our daughter because they find her adorable as well.

She does have a sweet disposition....waving when people say hi, smiling when they smile at her....so far she doesn't seem to be too overly shy. However if she's babbling or talking, she'll instantly stop when someone new walks into the room. It takes just a little bit to warm up to them then she'll continue on.

She'll "blink" at you or give you a big cheesy grin for no reason....or raspberry at you for fun.

I've noticed that she constantly is trying to find ways to walk to an identified destination rather than crawling whenever possible. She'll find something with wheels or that's light enough she can push and use it to walk to where she wants to go.

This past weekend we picked out and purchased her new car seat and I may transition her to it earlier rather than later. Her current car seat has been adjusted out almost as far as I can adjust it and I don't have a winter coat on her yet. Now that it's getting colder I think I will need to go ahead and put her in the new car seat so she's got enough room under the straps for her to wear her coat!

Jason also got her a little baby laptop for her birthday. She loves to pull up and try to grab at the buttons on our laptops, so he wanted her to have her own. It's able to connect to our computers so we can put "e-mails" from us to her on there. It's such a sweet idea.

Just a few more weeks and she'll hit the big "01".