Daddy's girl

Despite his fears, I think Chrys has his daddy's girl. She is very adamant about getting her daddy time on the weekend. She deliberately walks over to him and stands there until he picks her up. She's getting better about not being as grabby, but not perfect. She also gets very excited when we go to get him in the afternoon. This morning, for example, he took the cats to the vet. When I heard the garage door go up, I told her that daddy was coming. She squirmed off of my lap and went to stand and watch the door. It ended up with both of us sitting there waiting for him to come in. Hopefully he knows he's loved.

Her tummy got better. Now, she's only semi-messed up. I think it may be teething, but it kills me how long this process is. The first two teeth were pretty easy on her. These top two (if that's what all this is) are really being cruel. I did learn that we'll never use Aveeno diaper rash cream on her ever again. She was pretty happy, despite the recent bout of diaper rash, until I coated it in Aveeno. She was just about ready to crawl out of her skin. I took her to a quick bath in a sink full of coolish water and she calmed down. We're back to the Boudreaux's Butt Paste that a friend recommended and that seems not to irritate her.

She's finally getting over her perpetual skinned knee. When she decided to walk more, she fell lots. This resulted in what seemed an almost permanent rug burn on her right knee. Now that she's spending more time walking and less time falling, this seems to be going away.

Along with walking came exploring new places to walk. She loves to walk across our bed. I think she knows it takes more effort and is impressive so she does it as much as possible. Of course, when she goes a decent distance without falling, I give her a tackle hug so that might help encourage it.

Last night, she walked in grass for the first time. She had her shoes on, but still took these HUGE steps. I don't know if she was trying to avoid the texture of the grass on her legs (which she still doesn't seem to like) or if that's just how she accommodated the depth of the grass. It was pretty cute, though.

She has taken off down the hall chasing cats twice now. She loves to slide off the bed in the morning and play with her toys. Eventually, one of the cats catches her eye and off she goes chasing the poor cat down the hall. We need to get the upstairs baby gate on the installed very soon.

She also decided at the mall that she wanted to push her stroller instead of ride in it. She likes to only push with one hand so, unaided, she walks in circles. This is pretty funny, but gets in the way of other shoppers. We had to pull the handles way down so they were about parallel with the floor for her to reach them. She thinks it's great fun, though.

She's giving more kisses now. Of course, this just means that she turns to me with her mouth (often open) when I pucker up and ask her for a kiss. I'll take what I can get, though. Now, I'm working on blowing kisses.

She's shaking and nodding her head more accurately, too. Thursday at the mall, she was being really whiny. I thought it was about time to nurse so we went to sit down and nurse. She would latch, suck, break and move. I finally held her tight and made her look at me. I asked her, looking into her eyes, if she wanted to nurse. She adamantly shook her head so I let her go and she was happy. Man, this is nice!

She told the cats 'buh-bye' last week. I haven't been able to get her to repeat it, though. Curses! ;)

While we were visiting Aunt Chris, we learned that R has a bit of knowledge of the ASL sign for 'no'. Chris was using her hand to talk to Ryanne, just 'blah, blah, blah' as she opened and closed her fingers. Ryanne just sat there with this 'are you nuts' expression on her face. Turns out, she wasn't doing anything at the time so we're guessing she couldn't figure out why she was being told 'no'. Poor kid.