Explosion of Talent

Well, okay, maybe not talent, but abilities! During the past week, she has decided to perfect:

• use of the sippy cup (handles or not)
• feeding herself (and she can SHOVEL it in, with her left hand. The right hand's fine motor skills aren't as good.)
• eating table food (in fact, she only eats baby food now simply because I have some homemade servings I want to use up)
  
• standing alone (she will randomly let go of me, the table, couch or whatever she is holding on to)
• walking along things (her LeapFrog table, couch, etc.)
• signing just about every sign on her Signing Time Vol. 1 DVD (Dad being the most recent...so all day long she says "dada dada dada" and now she signs it too! Man, that really stinks for Mom! I'm about ready to go on strike...um, about that...)
• shutting doors (she's always loves to move them open, shut, but today she accidentally shut herself in her room and couldn't get out! Mom came to the rescue--to find her banging on the door and yelling as if saying, "hey, wait a minute, let me out, I didn't mean to do that!")
  
• oh, and let's not forget the temper tantrum (such a surprise coming from such a spicy, sassy girl, I know!)
  

My little baby is growing up!!!! I just said to DH tonight at supper that it's exciting she's growing up, but it's sad that my baby is no longer a baby. Now, if only we could perfect the sleeping through the night thing. Man, I will DEFINITELY be glad when that happens! Sleeping is getting better overall, but we are definitely still have really bad nights. (What is a really bad night? Let's see...mom or dad seeing every hour on the clock.) Currently, we are working on eliminating the nighttime bottle. But then, if we're up with her anyways, what's the difference, uh? Then next on the schedule will be sleeping past 5am. (Of course this morning she was awake BEFORE 5am...so maybe making it TO 5am SHOULD be achieved first! haha)

So there you have it...my baby has made serious advancements into toddler-hood over the past few days!