Independence

Evelyn's crawling around all over the house now, and is getting pretty fast too. She's still pretty low to the ground - "commando style," we call it, where she mainly uses her arms to pull herself forward, and she uses her legs and feet to push forward just enough to get going. We've got our work cut out for us, since we haven't done a whole lot of baby-proofing just yet, aside from installing the safety gate at the top of the stairs.

This newfound mobility is really refreshing for me, and I'm sure Evelyn feels the same way! She used to cry the second you left her alone in a room, but now, she just crawls out to find you. When getting stuff ready for Evelyn's bath, I used to have to make sure someone was around to hold her, or I'd have to put her in her bouncy seat on the bathroom floor (way back when she was smaller) and prepare for the bath as quickly as possible before she lost her patience. Tonight, John was working late so I handled the bath alone. I left her in the living room and she steadfastly made her way down the hall towards the bathroom, following the sound of my voice. By the time I finished filling her tub, Evelyn came crawling right into the bathroom with a huge smile on her face. Everything is so much easier these days!

But it's a little harder too, with all this independence and freedom of movement. We find ourselves saying "No" quite a lot more these days, as in "No, Evelyn, don't play with the space heater" and "No, Evelyn, don't pull on mow-mow's (aka Puddin's) tail." Sometimes I think she understands us -- when John puts on his stern voice when she's playing with the heater, half the time she actually stops. I think we are probably seeing the end of the "honeymoon period" of infancy and getting a preview of toddlerhood. I wish someone told us that it would end that quickly! If Evelyn's personality remains the way it seems to be now, she's going to be quite a handful when she's running around and speaking her mind.