Moving Like Crazy

I now spend most of my days following Reese around the house. It's exhausting--and part of me wonders how she isn't more worn out, because I know I certainly am.

Walking around the house is no longer enough of a challenge for Reese. Now, she tries her hand at short spurts of running. She also picks up items around the house and carries them with her. This morning, she insisted on carrying both her elephant AND one of Annie's toys at the same time. (Notice that she moved the elephant into her mouth so both hands were free for Annie's toy.)

Her new found coordination has also lead to some adventures in climbing. For a while now, Reese has enjoyed flopping around on the couch and love seat as well as trying to scale the footstool in her room. On Thursday afternoon, while I was putting some of her clothes away, I turned around and had a near-coronary when I saw Reese standing on top of the footstool for her rocking chair. (I had purposely moved it into the middle of the room so she couldn't use it to climb onto her rocking chair.) Not only was she standing on the footstool, but when she saw me, she smiled and then tried to jump off. (Guess all the jumping into the pool this summer got her thinking.) I ran to her and rescued her just before she went airborne. My dramatic rescue, though, made climbing on the footstool the most exciting moment of her day and she proceeded to do it again. Suffice to say, I've moved the footstool out of her room and into hiding for now. In addition, Reese is now trying to climb into and out of her playpen. She can't quite get in or out by herself, but she definitely makes an effort. Today at the gym one of the child-care workers told me that they caught her climbing on a push cart. When they told her not to, she looked at them, waved her finger back and forth and staunchly said, "No!" She then, of course, went right back to trying to climb on it. (Which reminds me--she's added another word to her vocabulary. The one we've been dreading.) I'm anxiously awaiting some cooler and drier weather so we can put this climbing and moving around to good use at the playground, and NOT inside our house.