Rachel Lee

My sweet Rachel Lee turned 8 months, and although I celebrated it by snapping a few pictures, I never got around to posting them or to blogging about her incredible abilities as an 8 month old. Now here we are, just days away from her 9 month birthday and I find myself pondering how it can really be passing by so very quickly. My baby is still very much a baby, and yet is approaching toddlerness already!!

The first toddler-like display is her ability to eat small chunks of food. She really wants to feed herself, and since ultimately I want her to feed herself I have been giving her little chunks of food. She is really cute about food on her tray that she does not like (i.e. carrots). She will eat one or two and then wave her hands over the tray to clear all the food off. She's quite effective too. But, if the tray is full of something she likes (i.e. cheerios, pears, bananas) she is happy as a clam and only becomes upset when the food slips through her fingers and does not make it into her mouth. I love that I already understand what she likes and does not like.

She also has tantrums. "Really?" you ask, "already?" Yes, really. And yes, already. She really doesn't like when you take things away or when she puts something in her mouth off the floor (i.e. grass or food dropped by her older sisters) and I swipe through her mouth to retrieve the chocking hazard. The other day she cried for 30 minutes because I took away my coffee and would not let her play with it. Pictured below is an incident when I took away some beaded necklaces that Hannah and Kate wear that Rachel Lee found and was playing with. I took away the necklaces, hung them up high and gave her different toys to play with. She crawled over to where I hung the necklaces, pulled up on the wall and stood there fussing and looking at the necklaces. I took her to the playroom 5 times and every time she became more vocal and intense. Oh my, she is focused this one.

It's with that same intensity that she laughs. She is really the greatest laugher of my girls, and Jeff and Hannah seem to the be people in our family that can get Rachel Lee to laugh the loudest and longest.

And she is crawling, cruising, balancing and will take a shuffle step. Jeff calls it a shuffle step because he says she doesn't actually lift her leg, but slides her leg and then either bend to the ground or leans and grabs for what she wants. But walking is coming, and it is getting increasingly hard to keep our house safe for baby. Here she is in action: