This girl is BUSY! Taking these pictures made me sweat. She has recently discovered how fun it is to be mobile and can’t stop exploring. Keeping her on the chair proved to be very difficult since she just couldn’t resist trying to crawl onto the ottoman.
We constantly find ourselves marveling over how beautiful she is. Grandma Steiner was here for a visit and asked if I find myself just watching her all the time. And that is exactly why it’s so hard to get anything done around here. Reese is captivating.
She is an incredibly happy baby—almost always smiling and charming. We say that she is happy 95% of the time, and that other 5% is intense!
I feel like she has a very peaceful personality. She has a contentedness that shows in her eyes. When she’s all played out, feeling sad or just needing some extra love, all you have to do is pick her up and the thumb goes in her mouth and she settles right down and relaxes into your arms.
On the opposite side of that peacefulness she is BUSY. She loves to jump and can turn anyone holding her into a jumperoo. It’s pretty funny to watch someone hold her for the first time and get surprised by the way she instantly goes from holding herself in a steady standing position to dropping to her knees only to jump back up again.
Nothing is out of her reach. She will wiggle, reach, pull, “swim”, hit at, lunge and stretch for anything she wants and not give up until she gets it or you completely relocate her. Taking a tumble off the chair (luckily I caught her and cheered her on so she didn’t realize it was scary) won’t even stop her from trying to get onto the ottoman over and over and over again while getting her picture taken.
She and Jace love each other! It’s so sweet how much they both light up when they see one another. Every morning Jace asks about where she is. I can count on him to keep her happy after loading her in her car seat. He also keeps me updated in the car, “Mommy, Reese is asleep.” “Oh hi Reese! Mom! Reese woke up!”
He loves to make her happy but isn’t so thrilled that she’s starting to get into his toys. The other day she scooted to a basket of his blocks and dumped it over, so he picked them back up and moved the basket to the entryway. A few minutes later she got to another tub of his toys, so he moved it to the entryway. Within a half hour we had quite the collection of his toys moved safely out of her reach.
When you lay her down on her back she flips over as quickly as possible. It took So.Many.Tries to get this picture. She now confidently can roll both ways, but really only flips from tummy to back in her bed, because anywhere else she just wants to be on her tummy and moving!
She isn’t actually crawling yet, but she sure can get herself around. She can scoot and maneuver herself around to get anywhere she wants to go. She pops herself up into this plank/push up position all the time. It’s hilarious to watch! The first time she did it she had this look on her face like, “whoa, what just happened?” and now does it and holds it for quite a while.
She pushes herself up on hands and knees and rocks, and her arms seem to know what needs to happen because they’ll walk forward quickly, but her little legs just aren’t sure how to follow yet.
She keeps us laughing and smiling and we are so happy she’s a part of our family!
