Full Hands

We have a busy girl. She's in to EVERYTHING and she's EVERYWHERE! The weekend before last she stayed with Grandma and Granddad Terry and then stayed for an entire week. Here she is at Wendy's before we left to head down there. She likes to stick her fingers in the ketchup.

When we got there Grandma instantly calmed her down after one of the worst road trips I have ever had with fruit:

We won't dwell on the fact that Rachel just doesn't travel well in the car. When we picked her up, she threw up 20 minutes from the house. Needless to say, if we have to travel with her again, I think we're going to invest in one of those over the seat DVD players to help entertain her. And until she can talk, I will not be driving with her long distance alone.

But....she had a GREAT time with her grandparents while she was down there:

While she was gone, I went ahead and converted her bed to a toddler bed:

The first few nights were really tough to keep her in the bed as she was so excited with her new found freedom that she kept crawling out of bed. We have since learned that we need to have the stairs on the left side of the bed instead of the right, because if we don't, she'll pull down all of he books that we put up on top of her changing table.  One we did that, she seems to do really well. This morning she woke up before I was in there to wake her up and she just sits up and says, "Mommy? Mommy! Mommy?" until I come in and get her. She does get out of bed and wander around sometimes if we put her to bed before she's good and tired, so Jason and I have been working to play with her real big before bedtime to help wear her out.

Yesterday I ran out and picked up a few new yard toys I'd found on Craigslist (photos will follow another time). One is a little slide that's just her size and she LOVES it! She probably climbed up and went down it 25 times and just laughed and giggled. In addition, she wore herself out. After a bath she turned on her tv and plopped down in her new chair instead of running around like she normally does. It was hilarious:

In her lap is her cup with almond milk and in the little pouch are dried figs. She loves those! How odd!

Yes, that little tv over on her toy chest? It's got a Baby Einstein movie in it and she knows how to turn it on, then will go sit in her chair and watch it. It actually holds her attention much longer that I would have thought.

Rachel came home from Grandma's with some new outfits that I am super excited to put her in! Photos of those will be coming. However, check out this super cute outfit I picked up at some point earlier this spring:

It's completed with her new copper shoes. When you first look at them in the box you think, "Huh, those are different." But as you look at them a little longer and then see them on her feet, they are adorable!

This weekend we're planning on playing outside with our blow up pool, our new slide, and also visiting with GramE and GrampE.

Rachel has recently demonstrated a strong need to have something in one or both of her hands at all times. I don't completely understand why she feels "secure" when she's holding something, but she does. She's starting to whine and want to take her blankie in the car with us when we go to day care, even though it's normally left at home. Yesterday when I dropped her off she insisted on taking the pinwheel that GramE got her a while ago and I'd left in the car. She's not really shown an interested in that item for several weeks and it's always been in the car where she can see it. While it's not a huge concern, this development does have its draw backs. (For example, the pinwheel went in to day care, but didn't return home). And if anything happens to her blankie....we're going to be in trouble. Right now she has two, but I'm strongly considering getting a few more, only because she drags the blanket around like Linus from Charlie Brown and it get filthy FAST.

We are, however, trying to keep her pacifiers kept up during the day instead of in her crib like we've always done. My hope is that she'll only need the pacifier in the car and when she sleeps. If she spies them laying around, she will climb or whine until she gets it. And she's demonstrated that she doesn't need it, she just likes having it at all times. The blanket I can handle. But the pacifier? I'd rather that be a bedtime thing.