What She's Up To

Clearly, I haven't caught up on vacation pictures yet.  In the meantime, I thought I'd give you a little Grace update.  She seemed to change quite a bit during the trip.  She has switched from constantly using her fast, elbows-first, belly-on-the-ground, army crawl, to being up on her hands and knees quite a bit.  She is moving easily between crawling and sitting herself up.  (I know "the books" say this is a skill for when babies are several months old, but neither of my kids has done it until just before walking time.)  She can get on and off of her pink scooter/walking toy thing all by herself.  Another molar popped through on the trip (for a total of three) and she got her second top front tooth yesterday (for a total of four front teeth.)  She has added "cheese" and "cracker" to her repertoire of signs now.  She signs "bird" for every animal and says "woof woof" for every animal.  She's not using many words, but she is loud and lets us know exactly how she is feeling.  Loudly.  So, when she asks for cheese or crackers and I don't give them to her, she has another thing to be very loud about.  She has an appetite like nobody's business!

What I am most excited about is that Grace is interested in using a fork.  She has always liked eating from utensils better than using her hands, which has meant a bit more work for me in feeding her.  But now, she wants to hold the fork herself the get the food to her mouth.  She can't really poke bites herself yet, so she needs help with that, but I'm so happy that she wants to use a fork.  A certain other someone around here didn't want to use a fork and spoon to self-feed until after his second birthday, and I had to do a lot of coaxing to get that to happen.  So, it looks like her strong will has a positive side in this area...she wants to learn to do it herself.

I will try to share pictures soon.  We have a lot of great ones from a very fun trip.  (And yes, Grace did well, as did Jonathan.)  Today, though...getting groceries.