Mountain Climbing

We took a big step this weekend, to prevent an even bigger leap. We have installed the hard-mount baby gate at the top of our stairs.

Over the last few days, Gracie has taken a huge interest in the stairs.

She kept inching closer and closer to the edge to look over, and has started flinging toys through the banister from the second floor onto the first. I will give her some credit, they do make a nice bang when the crash. It is almost the same level of bang that my heart made the first time I heard it.

Now that she is focused on walking, crawling is at lightening speeds. One second she is sitting there chewing in a shoe, the next she is on the landing flinging toys. Or more heart stopping, looking over the edge of the landing and down the stairs.

Hence the official installation of the gate and several holes in the hardwood banister. Eh, it is contractor grade though, so this just means that I will be able to replace it in a few years, right? Right??

So this is a win-win project! We keep our baby safe and I have the illusion that I will get some high priced home improvement in the years to come. Well, Lil’Rick doesn’t seem too happy about the arrangement. It is cramping his style.

We have a second mobile gate at the bottom of the stairs now too because when I caught her peering through the rail on the 3rd step of the stairs, my heart once again stopped for a moment. I yanked her off the stairs and slapped up the gate. What I didn’t realize is that I was trapping the dog on the stairs. Stuck in the limbo between the couch and our bed. 2 hours later, I noticed the whimpering.

Maybe if he starts peeing on the carpeting, we can add another home improvement project onto the list sooner instead of later!

Updates

I will write about the trip in the next day or so, but here are some updates I missed blogging about over the last week...

We have a 6th tooth. The sucker popped out to give us a much more cordial daughter while we were away from home. Now in the true nature of these things though, she is busy working on the 7th to help even out the bottom chompers.

Ok - Maybe this isn't the best photo, but she gets mad when you look in her mouth. She now has the two center bottom teeth (which don't look centered in the photo,) the two top center teeth and a tooth on each side up top. I think the next arrival will be bottom left.

Today gives us 2 full weeks of crawling. It is amazing how quickly she can move now. And how dirty I am discovering that my kitchen floor is. I hate cleaning, which is why we pay someone to come do it for us once a month, but I guess I am now deticated to sweeping / mopping weekly if not daily. Ugg.

Grace has also figured out how to go up the step between our family room and kitchen. Then insists on going back down it. Over and over. At least the wood floor on the 'down' portion of the activity has more give than the kitchen tile.

I guess I should have put her shorts back on before taking photos, huh?

Oh, and lets not forget, in true family fashion she is going straight for the wine rack. This morning she was pulling herself to standing position and then pulling bottles of wine off.

Guess we will just have to start drinking them faster.

Great Day For a Sick Day

So much for being sick today.

Friday afternoon Grace spiked a temperature of 100.9 at daycare. Anything above 100.5 for over an hour they send you home. Her teachers striped her down, wrapped cool towels around her and successfully got the temp down to 100.5.

Then she pulled a Poltergeist move and vomited carrots all over herself, Ms. Felicitie and 4 square feet of the tile floor below her.

We went home early.

All weekend she had a fever. It ranged from 99.9 to 201.1. She was so congested that there have been a minimum of 3 crying sessions per night.

Last night we made the decision to keep her home today and take the first available appointment at Dr.H's office. I called right at 9am this morning and the first available was 3:50pm today.

Great. I guess I could have gone to work.

Plus, as of this morning, all traces of fever have disappeared. She does have some funky looking snot (kinda like watered down chocolate frosting - yummy) coming out of one nostril and is tugging on her left ear.

I'm glad we are going though, just for the piece of mind of getting an all clear before flying on Saturday.

To make today even more worth while though - BIG ANNOUNCEMENT - Grace has figured out the knee #1, then knee #2 aspect of crawling.

Just a few moments ago, I turned to see that in a matter of minutes she had moved from her toy box on the carpet all the way over to the tile floor by the stairs.

I did a double take.

I turned back to the computer only to hear movement again.

I then watched her crawl back to the start position.



Way to go kiddo!!

She then went over to the window and started yanking on my curtains.

Hey - wait a minute. Let's just go sit over here for awhile longer.

I guess today was a GREAT day to stay home after all.

On Hands & Knees

I think after reading yesterday's post, Gracie's knees got jealous. "Why does the head get to have all the fun. I'm tired of hearing about these teeth. Let's get in on the action!"

And so they did.

She can now fully extend out of the baby yoga positions and onto hands and knees.

Yesterday saw a total of 3 knee movements to propel forward momentum, but lots more meaningful backwards wiggles.

Grandparents - be on alert! She will be mobile during our visit in two weeks!

Baby Yoga

Yoga. Well, baby yoga at least.

I know every kid must do it, but in her quest to crawl Grace is doing some interesting baby yoga. She wants to move to you, so she gets on her hands and 1 knee. The other leg just balances out behind her, hindering the crawl.

Much like this:

A few more days and it will be all over. She is so close to crawling and has the ability to stand without the parental hand now for close to 30 seconds before buckling. I guess we should start installing outlet covers and rolling up blind cords this weekend.