Reese Pulls To Stand!

I'll start with the big news: Reese is pulling herself up to stand (you didn't see that coming after you read the title of this post, did you?)! I thought the big news of the week was going to be that she has learned to transition herself from hands & knees to a seated position. She did that last Friday for the first time. Apparently, that got old fast, and she is ready for bigger and better things. We are pretty terrified of this new skill of pulling herself to stand, because we know we're getting one step closer to full mobility. She started doing it over the weekend, thanks to lots of prompting through PT exercises, & now she's pretty efficient. Here's a video from this afternoon:







Every time I finish a blog post, I start thinking about all of the little stuff that I don't mention. Reese is constantly doing new things, & I forget to mention them because they aren't the big "milestones" that we are always excited to share. But, they are accomplishments nonetheless. For instance, she has learned to spit. She really enjoys it, & thinks it's quite funny. Especially when she has food in her mouth. This makes meal time very funny. The pattern that spit out sweet potatoes makes on a food tray is incredibly intriguing. And fun to play with. I don't have pictures to go along with most of these things, so I'll just throw random pictures in along the way so that you don't get too bored. :) She has eaten a lot of different foods now, & I have become slightly obsessed with making her food myself. I bought a ton of organic veggies from the store, & I have become a pureeing addict. I have made her peas, green beans, mashed potatoes (with breastmilk, yummmmm!), sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, pears, mangoes, butternut squash, and pumpkin. I freeze them in little food storage cubes (which really just look like an ice cube tray, but they have a lid, & they're BPA free). When it's meal time, we just defrost a couple of cubes. It works out great, & it has saved us a TON of money. I did the calculations when I made the first round of food, & I made about $30 worth of organic jarred foods for less than $6. You can't beat that! I am slowly getting better about my fear of her choking, & I'm letting her try some new things. We recently started letting her nom on a little broccoli floret at dinner time, & she LOVES it. She loves pulling the little pieces off, & sucking the juices. She goes crazy over it, & it's pretty cute. She still loves her puffs, & she gets excited every time she sees them. It's so cute to watch her chew. She has 2 teeth now, which you can kind of see in this picture. It was taken a couple weeks ago though, so they are much bigger now.


Little Miss Independent has become quite the fighter when it comes to drinking her milk. She only wants to drink from the bottle, rather than nurse, other than first thing in the morning. This has pretty much broken my heart. So, the rest of the day, she gets breastmilk in a bottle, but even that has become a struggle. She wants to hold the bottle herself, and will squirm & throw a fit if you try to do it for her. She often becomes distracted, & discards the bottle to go play with the nearest toy. It will take an hour to get her to take 6 ounces, with lots of playing in between guzzles.

She still loves her kitty and her puppy.

Funny enough, at the same time she is exhibiting so much independence, she is also starting to have separation anxiety. She still warms up to strangers pretty quickly, but she is starting to cry when I walk away from her. Luckily, she doesn't do it when my mom is here, or it would make leaving for work even harder. It's worst at bedtime, and getting her to go to sleep at night has become a bit of a challenge, because she freaks out when I leave the room, no matter how tired she is.

This next picture is pretty random, but I had to share it. Reese has been occasionally been waking up to nurse around 6, & then she goes back to sleep. When she does this, she will sleep in pretty late. Sounds great in theory, but when this happens, the whole routine of the day gets thrown off, & she turns into a bit of a disaster. For this reason, I try not to let her sleep past 7:30 or 7:45. I HATE going in & waking her up when she is sleeping so peacefully, but it is for the good of all. It's a rare occasion that I have to do it, but when I walk in & see her sleeping, it absolutely melts my heart. On a happy note, she has transitioned to taking two 1.5 hour naps most days when we keep her on schedule, which is absolute heaven.

Reese is starting to show signs of a temper, which you wouldn't know from her sweet little face in the next few pictures. When she gets frustrated with something, or if you don't give her what she wants fast enough, she will ball up her fists, & start grunting/yelling/screaming until she gets it. It terrifies me for what's ahead.

I think that's about it. We'll see what this week brings!