Signing, walking, colds, and other things

The poor, little thing has a cold. She started Friday night coughing every hour or two throughout the night. Her nose started running on Saturday, and by Sunday, it was running like a sieve. The poor thing. Her nose is red and sore from the constant wiping with the tissues. If she sees you headed for a tissue, she’ll wipe her nose on your shoulder before you make it halfway across the room. Her nose isn’t running so much this morning, but she’s completely stuffed. You can almost hear the reverberation in her sinuses when she makes a noise. The poor, mite. I’m going to have to find the other half of her snot sucker. She won’t like it, but it’s better than the constant stuffiness or rough tissues on an already tender nose.

She’s using a new sign we don’t recognize. DH's mom and her neighbor were here on Saturday and noticed it. She’s pointing to the palm of her hand with her index finger. I Googled it. It doesn’t look like it’s an official sign. Rather, it may be a variation of “more” or “again” used for babies. That’s possible since she was using it at lunch and again yesterday and this morning while she was eating. She seemed to want more food. It must be something she learned at daycare. I meant to ask her teacher about it this morning, but I forgot. Maybe when I pick her up this afternoon.

Do you remember pretending you were an Indian as a kid (I'm probably dating myself)? You'd run around going woo woo woo woo woo woo. Baby girl picked up the war whoop noise from DH with the hand gesture and everything. Woo woo woo woo woo woo. She keeps doing it in the high chair and getting a huge kick from it. She looks at us with a grin on her face as she’s doing it, waiting for us to get excited and praise her which we inevitably do. She’s adorable the way she’s picking things up.

DH went to a work-related get-together on Thursday evening. While he was there, I had Kathleen duty (I had the better part of the deal). She’s been trying to sit on things – usually the pillows – while she’s crawling around the house. At one point while she was scooting around the kitchen, I flipped the booster seat that came with her high chair (we had it lying upside down on the floor by the baker’s rack). She crawled right to it, raised her bottom, and levered herself into the seat so completely please with herself. You know what this means, of course: we’re going to have to buy her her own, baby-sized chair for the living room.

She continues to work on standing and walking. She’s able to stand now without launching herself up from the pillow in the computer room. She lifts herself up from the squatting position and stands there steadily for at least 10 seconds before flopping down. She made it as long as 20 seconds a couple of times.

She’s going after the scooter on a regular basis. She won’t walk while we’re holding her hands for balance, but she will with the scooter. She’ll laugh and screech as she toddles behind the scooter across the room or down the hall. She loves it. You can see she wants to walk badly. If the scooter has the temerity not to cooperate with her wishes, she gets so annoyed. She’ll bat at it, screaming with frustration. We’re guessing she’ll be on two feet by the time Christmas rolls around.