"I did it"

Alyna showed a new smile yesterday. She was on her stomach in the playpen outside, and pushed herself to a sitting position. I said, "Good job Alyna." She looked up and gave a big smile with her eyebrows fully arched, and you could just tell she was thinking, "I did it." I was so proud.

Night before last, when I was putting them to bed, I came in the room and she had pulled to her knees on the crib railing. I thought, "Uh oh. We need to lower the matress right away." Barry didn't come home until they were asleep, so at the 10 o'clock feeding, I held Alyna while he lowered the matress. It's not a fun job to crawl under there, and it was even worse because he had just worked a 12 hour shift. Halfway through, we were both saying we probably could have waited a few days for this anyway. We were wrong about that, and right to spend the time to move it down then. Last night during the bedtime put down she pulled up to her knees, and then to her feet. I picked her up and said a hushed, "Good job Alyna, but now it's time to go to sleep." I laid her down, and she went to sleep.

Alyna still scoots most places where she wants to go, but she often gets up on her hands and knees and rocks. Sometimes she'll even move an arm or a leg before plopping onto her belly. She doesn't go very far or fast yet.

Ryan is a little bullet. We can put up a baby gate at one entrance to the living room, and have a sliding pocket door at the other. If we don't close off one of the entrances, he takes off for it, trying to get to the dog's water bowl in the kitchen. Yesterday, I would leave just enough room in the door for Henrey to come in and out, but Ryan saw it and took off. It only takes him about 10 seconds to cross the entire room on his hands and knees, and it's a large room.

The upside of his crawling achievements is that I can pick up Alyna to go to the other room and say, "Come on Ryan", and he will follow us. He's usually almost out of the room when I get back to get him. If I'm going all the way out to the van I have to be sure to close that pocket door, or he could find his way to the dog bowls before I get back. We are working on a way to secure the pocket door closed by the time he figures out how to slide it open.

One of the differences between them is that as Alyna is learning to sit up, crawl, and stand, she is more cautious of not getting hurt. Ryan just stood up, and then fell down or cried for Mommy to come help him. Alyna has already figured out that if she twists her hips and bends one leg under when she's going down, she'll fall on her bottom which doesn't hurt as much. Most of her hard falls have been because Ryan bumps into her while trying to play with the same toy she is.

They both say "Mum" a lot now when they are tired or want something. It's a precious thing to hear, but they always sound so sad when they say it. Alyna often says "Ha" when you say "Hi" to her, and we've been working on waving when she does it for hi and bye bye. She waves her arms all the time anyway, so I been saying the words when she does it. I think she's catching on. We say hi and bye to the stuffed animals in her room at almost every diaper change.

Their new favorite song is "Where is thumbkin?". Sometimes they'll even look at their hands when I'm singing it to them.

Life isn't dull in this house, nor would we want it to be.