These Are The Days: Simply breathing her in

That's what I've been doing lately. Evalee has become such a grown up little lady lately. I live in a whole new world now ever since she has been sleeping so well at night. I feel a little more like myself and a little less like the high strung crazy person I have felt like for the last 9 months. It seems like every day she finds a new way to amaze me, whether it's in the giant hug she gives me when I pick her up after school, the ridiculously huge dinner she consumes each night through gummy grins covered in juice and Cheerio bits, or the new things she figured out how to do. Small things that only a mother could get excited about. For example, tonight, when she started putting her stackable boxes inside one another for the first time. I found her to be a big enough genius that I had to call my mom just to brag on her. She has also built up enough stomach muscle to be able to push her Christmas toys around the house, walking around like she owns the place. That is, until she runs into a wall, veers to the side and gets the wheel stuck on something, or runs over a toy. Then it's a look of desperation until help comes. So okay, maybe not TOTALLY independent yet. With how well she can walk with her toys, I can not wait until she can go play outside! I think as soon as she can, she will be off and running. Literally. She is just too impatient to sit any longer :). I daydream about the days where we can just have fun together outside -- going to play at the park in Orion, using our season passes to the zoo just a few minutes away, and playing with all the outdoor toys I have already bought in my imagination for her for the summer!

Her front teeth are getting more and more prominent. You still can't see them when she smiles, but when you give her a good tummy tickle you can see both of those little pearly whites. I think her teeth have given her a little bit of a, shall we say, upset tummy this last week or so and as a result she has experienced her first really bad case of diaper rash. On Tuesday this week she felt so crummy all she wanted to do was cuddle with Mom in our chair, which sounded like a good night to me, so that's what we did. She is still going through this phase of insisting on being with Mommy instead of being her usual gregarious self, but I suppose I'll take Dr. Moen's stance on it as well as just call it emotional development. :)

We got two big bags full of hand me down clothes last week -- lots of it was adorable summer wear in the size she's in now, so we'll see if she gets to wear any of it. Clothes are getting awfully tricky to predict for her these days. Luckily we got nearly her entire wardrobe at yard sales, on clearance racks, and from bags of hand me downs from friends so it's not too much of a loss when sizes don't work out just right :). She loves to play with her clothes (I use the word play loosely... more like take them out of the laundry basket one by one, feel them, and then see how far she can throw them) so she was a great help to me when I was getting all of them sorted into sizes and boxed up!