Week of July 1 - All Things Cute & Wonderful

I think I have remarked in prior posts that Emily is a big fan of boxes, and the more colorful the box, the more she likes it. So naturally, Dad is always finding interesting and colorful boxes to add to her toy pile. One that has been a hit for weeks is a large Rice Krispies box with a colorful collage of writing and pictures on it's back. Emily just loves to study this box, spending minutes at a time looking at every detail, front... back.. sides.. top.. bottom. The really funny part though is she also likes to put the box on the floor, get up on hands and knees on top of the box and do the little baby "gorilla stomp fest" on it, laughing, giggling, and smushing. Poor Rice Krispies box... it never stood a chance. :) After the umpteenth time of seeing the poor box smushed flat, Dad finally gave up and quit fluffing it back into shape. Emily none the less, still enjoys it just as much and continues to baby gorrilla stomp it several times a day. It is still one of the first items she pulls out of her toy bins in the family room at the start of each day, though an empty Crystal Geyser water bottle is usually a close second.

On the personal development front, Emily has move past the need to pull herself up to standing position this week. She has quickly figured out that it is a whole lot easier if she simply gets on to her knees, grabs hold of couch, table, dad, mom, whatever is handy, and then raise the right leg to put foot firmly on floor and push herself up into the stanging position. So we now have a little girl that can stand pretty much at will as long as there is something for her to hold for balance. Combine this with her well developed crawling skills and we now have a very mobile and resourceful little girl, as evidenced in the photo sequence below. Baby exits her room, makes a right turn, cruises down the hallway, stops, makes a left turn, grabs stair rails, and then stands up to see what is going on.
It is remarkable how quickly babies develop, learn, and apply. It seems like every day is literally filled with new progress. Just a couple months ago, Emily was pretty much a little floppy bag of giggles, unable to crawl at all. Now she not only crawls, but does so with purpose and intention of target and has progressed to self-enabled standing. Even more remarkable are personality traits and little body language skills that we have simply no clue how she developed them. For example, when Emily wants to draw mom's attention and approval, she has this very coy little routine she does where she looks askew over her shoulder at her mom, then smiles and turns her head slowly the other direction, all the while keeping eye contact with mom. We are clueless how she developed such a deliberate and advanced capability. With dad, it's much more direct, she will simply tilt her head to one side or the other, make very bold and deliverate eye contact, and then open up with a big toothy smile. I simply have to remeber to take a close up photo of Emily's little finger so you can get a true image of the little finger she has Dad so completely wrapped around :)

In closing this week, it seems appropriate to share couple more photos of Emily and some of her cuddly friends in our living room. The cuddlies are actually Moms, but Emily does not know this, and probably does not really care either :)

It is 4th of July week, and since I have the week off, it will be a full week of quality time with Emily.. yay!!!!