Where to start?  It’s been a while since I’ve posted a “skillz” update and honestly, it feels like this girl has been gaining a new skill every 15 minutes.

Fine Motor Skills. There’s no doubt we’ve got a good eater on our hands and she’s been refining her fine motor skills by eating as much finger food as I can give her. Currently at the top of her list are blueberries (cut up) and grapes (also cut into tiny pieces). It is the cutest thing when she carefully reaches for the berry or grape with her thumb and index finger, then slowly raises it to her mouth. Right now she manages to get the small piece of fruit in her mouth about 70% of the time.  The other 30% of the time it falls to her bib. What is so funny about these times is that she thinks it’s in her mouth and chews, chews, chews until moments later she realizes that there’s NOTHING in there. At which point she fuses asks for assistance from mom.

The motor skills are also in full effect when she’s playing. Guaranteed enjoyment is grabbing two hard toys and banging them together. While she is very satisfied by the noise that is created by doing this, her little eyes blink in slight surprise every time the objects crash together.

Sitting up on her own.

After 2 months of this move, she has finally figured out the roll-to-your-side-and-push-yourself-up technique. Up until a couple of weeks ago, any time she wanted to sit up, she would get into this pilates move and whine until you sat her up… Which got old, you know after the first 6 weeks! Anyway, it’s her new favorite move. So much her favorite, that whenever I put her on her tummy to practice crawling, she says, forget this, and just sits up. Hehe…

Military Push-Up’s.

Ok, so she isn’t doing Jillian Michaels type push up’s, but she does push herself has as high as she can go… on her toes with arms fully extended. She stays in this position for as long as she can stand it before collapsing. Then repeats over and over if the mood strikes her. I know she’s wearing black pants in this picture, but if you look carefully, you can see my dirt/dust particals underneath her. Hehe - I sweep/swifter every other day, but it’s a losing battle folks.

On The Move…sort of.

As of about a week ago, she can very effectively push herself backwards when on her tummy. The problem is that she appears to WANT to go forward.  So when she ends up further and further away from the object or person she has set her sights on, she get’s frustrated. In the photo above, she is moving away from Daddy and under the couch. Problem is that Daddy’s got the darn ball she wants. She can actually get moving very quickly when she’s on the hardwood floor. As for me, I’m trying to savor these last few weeks of limited mobility and finish baby-proofing the house.  First on the list is mounting our tv to the wall.

Chompers. She’s got 5 teeth now. 3 on the top, 2 on the bottom… And I’ve got the bite marks to prove this. The other night she got her hands on a magazine, tore a page and was eating a small piece of paper. This all happened within about 15 seconds. I quickly laid her over my lap and stuck my finger into her mouth to retrieve that piece of The Economist, only to be bitten so hard that she drew blood. I quickly pulled out my finger, cursing under my breath while she continued to suck/chew. I went in again, and this time was smart and went in from the side, where molars will someday be. I was finally triumphant and she was pissed.

Bath Time. Part of Quinn’s nightly routine is a bath every night. Our current arrangement for the bath, is either Jake or I hop in the tub with her. Each night she seems to discover and obsess over something different…  Sometimes she want’s to stand the entire time and play with the faucet.  Sometimes she wants to repeatedly push the “plug” switch thingy, down, to release the water. Sometimes it chewing on her toys… However the newest and most unpleasant new activity that she’s discovered is, while sitting up, she puts her mouth down to the water and drinks up. Last night Jake was bathing her and no matter what distractions he placed in front of her, this activity would not cease. So the bath ended sooner than later last night. Tonight I’ll bring in her sippy cup with the hopes of teaching her, “Are you thirsty? Here, drink from your cup. Not the bath water, which I’m 99.9% sure you’ve peed in”.

Naps. For quite a long stretch of time she has taken between 3-4 naps a day.  Each nap would range from 40 - 70 minutes. This would allow mommy to get all of the 1000 things done on her list, including the work I do for LP at home. I know that all good things must come to an end, but I was at least hoping for a gradual change. For a week now, Quinn has been napping in her crib and not only are the naps shorter (30-45 minutes), but she seems to want to only nap twice in the day.  Yes, I know this is the natural progression, and that soon, she’ll be down to only 1 nap a day, however how in the world am I going to get all this stuff done??? Do I hear laughter from the veteran parents??

People, where does this time go??? With her learning so much, so fast, things seem to be whizzing by us. I want to pause and rewind so many moments of each day. Oh and by the way, can I officially mark the day as her being “Daddy’s Girl?” No one can seem to bring a smile to her face like Daddy does and it honestly melts my heart beyond recognition.

And like clock work… I can hear her rousing on the baby monitor. But this is good news folks… it’s 8 a.m. I’ve had a whole hour and a half to my wee-little self.