45 Weeks

Madeline is moving so fast, it's hard to keep up.  Literally.  We spend most of the day following her around the apartment making sure she doesn't get into the diaper bin.  She really wants to get into that diaper bin.  We've had to rearrange furniture and get rid of our coffee table to ease our fears that she'd injure herself on sharp corners.

It's so fun watching her learn and grow.  It's almost as if you can see her mind working every problem out. She learned where the toys in her room are this week, so when she wants to play with them, she simply crawls into her room and starts pulling everything off the shelves.  She'll spend some time playing with her dolls.  Then she'll flip through some books.  Then she'll find where her clothes and shoes are kept and start burying herself in those.  She takes her onesies and places them on her head like she's trying to try them on.

She's pulling herself up to standing easily now, and she's even starting to glide along the couch.  Her newest trick is walking along in a bear crawl.  It looks like she's doing the downward facing dog yoga pose.  She stands on her toes, pushes her butt way up into the air, and scoots along on her hands and feet.  During her lessons this week, she tried to go from that position to standing, which impressed her teacher very much.

She's still being more clingy than usual, but it's not surprising given how fast she's growing and learning.  I think she just wants reassurance that Mumma and Dada are still going to be there even though she can now crawl into the other room on her own.  It's so cute when she comes crawling up to me, full speed, and starts tugging on my ankles to get up.  She's such a little ankle biter.

Madeline is eating better and better.  She's pretty much feeding herself for every meal now.  I've learned that if I give her some finger foods to play with, she'll tolerate me scooping food up into her mouth at the same time.  This helps when I'm feeding her yogurt or fruits that are too slippery for her to feed herself.  She loves cheese and toast, or crackers, the most.  She could take or leave avocado.  

Madeline is also finding her voice these days.  And, boy, is that voice loud.  She loves yelling in the super market for some reason.  She's not upset, she's just yelling...loudly.  Maybe it sounds weird to her in the big space?

She learned to say "Hi" over the weekend.  When we say "Hi, Madeline!" she says "Hi" back.  So cute! She babbles constantly, and she continously tries to imitate words we are saying.  "Up" becomes "Uh-uh."  Baby becomes "Bahhhb."

Last, but not least, her hair is really, really starting to come in now.  Her daycare teachers commented today that it looks like it has grown a lot from when they saw her just last week.

I was smoothing down her hair tonight after her bath, and I was remembering how her hair used to turn into this downy, poof-y peach fuzz after baths when she was a little, little baby.

It made me a bit nostalgic.  She's such a big girl now.