Independent woman

I just put Piper down, after lowering her crib to the lowest setting because Little Miss is trying to pull herself up on everything now. In the bathtub, in her pack and play, in her crib, on the furniture, me, everything. Probably the best part about the pulling up is the look of pride on her face when she's successful. Priceless. Probably the worst part is her not feeling comfortable getting herself back down, which is why we found her screaming her head off at 3 am last night standing up in her crib. Hope she figures that part out soon!


Pulling herself up is cool and all, but my favorite new skill is hugging. She gives the BEST hugs - she squeezes super hard with the biggest smile on her face! And today there were lots of hugs and kisses combos. The weather may have sucked today - cold and rainy - and Piper may have been fussy for most of it due to the middle of the night play session she had, but honestly big squeezes and super sloppy kisses made up for all of that :-)

And while you can't see them in the picture above, Piper went from two to seven teeth during the week after I blogged last. Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite week of all of time, but I guess better to just bang them all out at once! She now has all four top front teeth and her left lateral incisor, which means she's able to take serious bites out of both food and non-food items. I found this out the hard way when I gave her my apple core last Friday to chew on when we were at a play date (which I've done a ton of times before with no issue ...). She bit the whole top of the core off. Luckily Reid was watching her more closely than I and we fished it out right away, but no more cores for Piper! Instead, it'll be bring on the bbq. Mmmmm ... ribs ...

She's also way into the water now - both in the pool and in the bath tub. She absolutely loves it! And while this definitely gets me psyched up for summer - we will definitely be swimming together every day that it's nice - it also freaks me out with the pool in the backyard. We're going to have to be SO careful ... and she's going to have to learn that she only goes in with us. But for now, I'm going to enjoy the huge smiles on her face as she dives into the pool at me or Reid and kicks and splashes all over the place. She doesn't usually rock the bikini, but her friend (and supposed future boyfriend according to his parents) Thomas was visiting so she decided to work it a bit. Check out that belly. Freaking awesome.
You can probably tell by the look on her face that she has quite the personality. She's already a bit of a drama queen and I predict will throw some huge tantrums in her day, but what's coming out the most right now is her independence. Standing up is part of that, but the other big deal is what she's eating. It is such a bear to feed her baby food now. She just wants to feed herself. Some days I worry that this means she's not getting everything she should be eating, but the fact is she's still growing so I can't worry too much about it. And this means some days she eats a lot (like last night's pasta with pesto, grilled chicken, roasted tomatoes with peas dinner), and other days, she barely eats (like today's lunch out at Rock Hill with Scotty and Eliza). It used to stress me out, but now I just go with it. If she's hungry, she'll eat, and I better just have lots of finger foods ready for her!