Rainy Day

Today we had plans to head back to Pirate Cove park for a play date, but it was raining all morning and it was cancelled, so instead we headed out to Studio Grow in the afternoon. Holly's sleeping is still erratic, last night she went to sleep a bit later then usual but for once slept through, unfortunately she woke up grumpy at 6:30 AM. Joel tried to get her back asleep but she was ready to "play" so he got up with her and let her run around the living room for a few hours.She didn't really want to eat and wore herself out. By 9:30 Joel was ready to head to work and holly was ready for her nap. She slept until 1:15 which was good for mommy, who spent that time catching up on some sleep of her own. After some lunch we headed out to play. Holly has a knack of making friends where ever she goes and was ready to play the second we arrived.She likes following the older kids around and watching them as they play, she is even starting to mimic some of there behaviors and learn from them, which I think is amazing, kids are the best teachers. She learned a new games with the blocks, last time she was contented to throw them out of the bin, this time she tried to arrange them and even placed them all in the back of a "dump truck" that she then lifted so they could tumble out.She also likes t make friends with the littler babies, she is intrigued with how they just lie on there back and she will lean over and look at there face and try and kiss them. She has been really good about learning to be gentle, but she likes to point out there eyes and even if she is gentle it isn't the best idea to let her poke at babies eyes.She of course loves the ball pit and is able to climb into it on her own now. This little boy was about 30 months and he liked to swim and bury himself in the balls, Holly jumped right in and tried to play with him. Once she was done she reached up so I could pull her out. The little boy was throwing the balls out which Holly thought was funny. Once she was out, she would chase the balls and then bring them back and put them back in.In the playroom Holly got a hold of some plates and started to stack them. They look like China, but are safe and sturdy plastic. She held onto these plates for a while walking around and around the play area.But then she got very interested in spinning the plate. She did it by accident when she dropped one, and then I showed her how to spin them, but she wasn't very good at it, it was more like dropping the plate. But this little girl figured it out right away so she showed Holly over and over how to spin the plates.Once she got bored with that she wandered around, but always finds a place to climb. In this case it was onto the baby beds. She stood all the way up, but when I told her down, she crouched back down like a good girl. She is also climbing up the slide and hanging over the side, which is a scary though so I have to sit right next to her while she does it. I'm not saying she is a bully, but there was this little girl who was about 2 that she scared.The little girl was climbing up the slide stairs and she wasn't that good at it. Holly decided to climb up the slide and beat her to the top. Then she hung out at the top leaning over towards the stairs hanging on the rail and the little girl was too scared to climb up. I had Holly slide back down, and then the little girl took a turn. it was cute. All in all we had a fun time and by 6:00 she was exhausted and ready for her nap.

Playdate @ Chloe's

On Tuesday we went on a play date at Chloe’s house. We had a lot of fun. There were about 8 moms’ there with their babies, but Holly was the oldest and only cruiser. Well, towards the end a mom with a 9 and ½ month old, Mackenzie came with her mom Amy and she was able to cruise, but she seemed to mostly stay in one place. She actually could stand independently, like if you pulled her up to a stand she would just hang out there standing and eventually sit herself down, but not take any steps. It was pretty cool to see.

There were a few 8 months old who had the crawling and sitting down mastered, but they didn’t seem to want to wander off and crawl anywhere either. Then, there were a few littler ones who were just getting the hang of sitting. Holly I guess is a very independent baby, she is not afraid of other people, and as long as mommy is within her range of sight, she is happy to be off playing on her own.

It was fun to see all of the babies interact with each other, and Holly is definitely a social butterfly. She goes right up to the other babies and tries to make friends, she of course wants to see whatever it is they are playing with, but then gives it back after she “takes” her turn and she moves on to the next thing. She was friendly with the moms too using them all as a means to travel to wherever she was going simply cruising right onto them and over them and climbing wherever she needed to go.

She loved playing with all of the new and interesting toys, and Chloe has gotten some new ones since our last visit. I decided to get one of those leapfrog tables after playing with it at Chloe’s house, she had two one up on its legs and one on the floor, (which I didn’t realize was the same toy at first, so it sold me that the legs were removable) Chloe’s mom said they are on craigslist pretty cheap, I found one for only 10$ so I am hoping that they sell it to me, but the lady did have some other inquiries. There was also this cool front door toy, that was big and something you could use for Cruising. The door open and closed which she loved and there was a little mail slot with an opening and closing cover that said, you’ve got mail and she did that one over and over. She is starting to understand that she was controlling that sound and making that noise, and loved it.

There were a lot of neat musical toys and new things to chew on of course. It was funny as we had to extra baby proof. Holly found all kinds of neat ways to escape from the play area, like going under an end table into the other part of the room. We also had to move the fence, since she is a wanderer. The other moms like to say that Holly is a very “busy” baby, which is sweet, but what they really mean is that she doesn’t sit still for a second, and is extremely active. She is hard to keep up with sometimes.

We had fun overall. I am starting to try and teach Holly gentle, and she doesn’t really know her own strength and has no notion of where her body is in space. She tramples over all things, be it toys or other babies, sometimes even trying to sit on them, and scotch them out of her way. I think one of the babies pulled her hair, but I can’t recall for sure if it was here or somewhere else we played this week, but I thought it was good for her, she is always in there face, and tries to pull on them and grab there hair. Maybe she isn’t sophisticated enough yet to understand that it hurts, and that is what she does to them, but she is tough, and it took about 3 seconds of me holding her before she was pushing mommy away so she could go and play some more.