Crawling Adventures

Look at the trouble that Vivie is brewing up:

Because of her new-found freedom called crawling, she discovered her favorite spot--my craft/sewing/misc. closet in the downstairs bedroom!

She dumped the bag of thread, then got tangled up in it all...I think her favorite color is pink--those are the ones she chose to pick up and clap together....hmmm...wonder where she saw that color before...

And yes, she is sporting a runny nose. A very, very, runny nose. Thanks to the crawling and all the germs that go from the floor, to her hands, to her mouth. Oh, the joys of babyhood.

She is faster than I give her credit for...DETERMINED and strong as an ox--like the rest of those McLaughlin girls. She loves all the bathrooms...even the boys---ick. (it does get cleaned weekly, but there's something to those boy's bathroom--not straight-shooters? I'll spare you...you're welcome). Perhaps she's noticed that the rest of us spend quality time in the bathroom, so why not her? She's caught on! At least she hasn't figured out yet that there's a lot of fun to be had in that big toilet bowl...or she'd be pulling herself up and having some splish splashy fun with her light-up ducky, I'm sure. And I'm certain that day will come too...

And I'm grateful that she's just climbing up a few inches instead of a few feet. I'm fretting the day when she starts to scale staircases, fences, walls, cribs... She's no longer content sitting, bouncing, and twirling inside her saucer; she likes climbing under it and just hanging out and grabbing the leftover food bits from snacktime...or pencil shavings from careless big kids. I'm not so sure I like how fast she's caught on to this crawling thing. It means sweeping and vacuuming 2-3 times a day, sweeping her mouth/throat for Lexie's polly pocket shoe or the occasional coin, and today I even performed the heimlich without as much as a flinch! But she sure is a cutie pie and we're grateful she can crawl at bearly a year old.

Once the five older kids are snug in their beds and I'm upstairs decompressing on the computer (laptop is broken still), as part of her night-time routine she starts whining and crawls all over trying to find me then down the hall to the base of the stairs and whines for 'mama.' She loves her cuddle time and daddy's night cuddles just don't do the trick. So we cuddle, and I type with one hand while she helps with both her hands and sometimes her whole body! Whatever I have to do to get the job done. She's slobbering on me now-I think she's out! Ahhhh, precious stages.