Ready or not

Ryanne's standing hiatus seems to be over. She's doing LOTS more standing, with everything. Yesterday, Mick gave her the walker (looks sort of like a kiddie lawn mower) and she even did some walking around with that. She may yet walk by the end of the month - YIKES.

She's doing more exploring and getting more rebellious already. "No" will still usually make her stop doing something, but I still try to reserve it for the really dangerous things like power cables or the outlets on the wall. She also responds really well to her name and I use that for some of the lesser infractions, like eating important papers. :) There are times, though, that all she does is smile at me when I say her name or No and then off she goes back to whatever. This one's going to be trouble.

She's getting much better at eating. She's pretty good about having something at each meal. Dinner is still the hardest and I think it's because she's getting tired. She wants to go to sleep or play with the toys she hasn't seen all day, not be stuck in the high chair. Hopefully it will get easier when she doesn't spend days away from home.

She really seems to be tiring of baby food. She'd much rather have stuff that she can pick up with her fingers. She's getting much better at picking things up with her thumb and pointer finger. She's still not using just the tip of the pointer, but she's getting closer every day. She likes meals that she feeds herself better than the ones she eats from a spoon so I try to save those for dinner when she's least likely to eat anyway. It seems to be working so far. She feeds herself green beans, carrots, pears, bread, crackers, the Gerber foods (biter biscuits, zwieback, fruit and veggie puffs, wagon wheels, etc).

Right now, I can hear dada telling her to splash in the bath and her little hands hitting the water - what a sweet sound. He's taught her how to turn the light in the bathroom on and off and she just LOVES doing this. We'll have to find her one of those extenders so she can do it from the ground in approved rooms once she gets walking. She also LOVES brushing her tooth. No clue when the next ones will show up, but no signs of them yet.

Her other trick with dada is staying really stiff and letting him hold her up by her hips. He sticks her out like a superhero flying, holds her above his head, and holds her out from his chest. She really enjoys it.

And now, she's whining mamamamama and making the sign for milk so I guess I know where I ought to be.