Milestones and quick hands

I wanted to mention a couple of things kids did during this Thanksgiving vacation.

One day, while Matthew and Summer were visiting for the holidays, we put Tyler to sleep in Lydia's crib. He rolled over for the first time and got his feet stuck in between the crib slats. So we had to go and save the poor baby. Now, he rolls over quite a bit and I find him sleeping on his side a lot.

Another incident happened one night during that same time frame. Tyler ended up sleeping downstairs in his car seat. Good thing he was sleeping next to us, because in the middle of the night I happened to look over and see him laying half-way on the ground. He scooted down in his seat until only his head remained resting on it. And the surprising thing was, he was not making much sound, just grunting a little bit. Needless to say, we keep a closer eye on him these days.

Lydia's big achievement this week is sleeping in her "big girl bed" consistently. Pretty much every night (for a whole week) she has gone down without much of a fuss. We are so proud of our little girl. Another of her recent achievements (less comforting to us than the one we just mentioned) is her perfection to get to the forbidden stuff. First, it should be noted that as most children her age she has been ransacking our drawers and cabinets since she started walking. So, we started hiding things on higher shelves. That's when the moving of the chairs and stepping stool gave her new freedom to discover. Now she has grown tall and nothing is safe on a highest chest of drawers, top shelf of the computer desk or cabinets above the toilet. As for examples, there are plenty. To name only a few is doing injustice to her creativity, but for the lack of time, it will have to do.

One day, we were so excited that Lydia went upstairs to play. We thought she finally is learning to play on her own. It was too quiet for too long and it made us nervous. Naturally we decided to take a look. That's when we found her in the bathroom with an opened nail polish bottle, trying to paint her nails. In the process she painted her belly, arms and legs. So the nail polish remover was put to use and Lydia was clean again. We put away some things on higher shelves in hopes that it would be out of reach. Obviously, we did not think of everything. Next time we found her with mommy's facial base skilfully rubbed in her hair.

A week ago, Lydia got into our downstairs closet, to the very back of it, to be precise. She pulled out Daddy's old football helmet, some Christmas wrapping paper and few other random things. That day was not a complete disaster because things she pulled out where not harmful. Now, yesterday, Lydia found and tested some Robitussin before spilling it on a few things in our room. Actually, it was not evident which came first, tasting or the spilling, but that really has no baring on things. The matter of fact is that we can not leave anything out for even short periods of time, before it is thoroughly researched and tested by Lydia. There are not enough high cupboards and shelves to keep it out of this little girl's reach, so we spend our days watching her like hawks, trying to prevent the next disaster and cut down on clean up time. Notwithstanding, she seems to keep on perfecting her reach and grab skills. Pretty amazing. When do toddlers grow out of this stage? I hope soon.