Leaps and Bounds

Holy cow! Evie is learning and growing at a ferocious rate. It isn't possible to leave her in one spot anymore and expect her to still be there a few minutes later. That little girl moves fast! And she's smart! She understands the phrase "Come here!" and she'll crawl towards us and then reach up her arms for us.

Evie is a very social little person, and likes to be with her Mommy and Daddy. She's learning to follow us wherever we go. The other day, I left her in the middle of the living room floor while I ran downstairs to get her a bottle. When I came back two minutes later, she was behind the recliner, halfway to the stairs, and was playing on the fireplace bricks. Good thing I came back when I did, or she might have made it all the way down the stairs! Then yesterday morning, I gave her a bath, put a clean diaper on her, and left her to play in the middle of the bedroom floor with the door closed so she couldn't escape. I left the door between the bedroom and the bathroom open so I could keep an ear on her, and I got in the shower. Only seconds later, I heard little grunts getting closer and closer. After washing my hair, I poked my head out of the curtain and saw my little girl grinning up at me from the bathroom doorway. When I was all clean, I looked out again and she was sitting up on the cold floor, playing with the bathmat. I dried off and stepped onto the bathmat, and she grabbed my feet and tried to climb up my legs.

She's getting good at climbing all around. A couple of nights ago, I was curled up on the couch playing on my computer, and Evie was playing on the floor at my feet. Suddenly, I heard serious little grunts and then felt her pulling up and playing with my toes. I looked down, and she had used the couch to pull herself up to a standing position! I called to Todd, but just as he poked his head around the wall, she plopped down again. Then she pulled up again, but plopped down as soon as Todd tried to see. Finally, he was able to witness this major event! And this afternoon, I was finally able to document it!

Besides her physical accomplishments, Evie is learning to try new foods. I took her to her appointment on Tuesday, and she is now allowed to have three solid meals a day, in addition to her bottles, and she's allowed to try meats. I got her all kinds of fun new foods to try: apples and cherries, pears and raspberries, apricots with pears and apples, apples and blueberries, and mango. We fed her turkey in turkey broth Tuesday night, and she was not impressed. She kept gagging, and refused to finish it. Last night we tried beef in beef broth, and the same thing happened. Finally, tonight, we tried apples and chicken. I don't know if the third time is the charm, or if having a familiar fruit flavor mixed with the meat helped, or what. But she scarfed it down!

At her appointment on Tuesday, we also weighed and measured her. She is now 24 7/8 inches tall (4th percentile--but she's our child; we're not surprised she's short!), weighs just over 16 pounds (23rd percentile--hooray!) and her height to weight ratio is in the 84th percentile. She's a very healthy and happy little girl, and she's learning and growing at a good rate!