Great Strides

Since my last post, Elsa has not only started pulling herself up to standing position, but she also climbed stairs for the first time a few days ago, and today she even "cruised" from the ottoman to the couch by herself. Not bad for one week! She's also shown remarkable improvement in "walking" while hanging onto our hands. So I think the ability to pull herself up was essentially a missing piece in her physical development ... now that she's got the strength to pull herself up, it's cleared a path for her to start doing all kinds of new things.


Unfortunately, there's at least one crucial skill yet to be mastered: Sitting back down. She's still hesitant to just plop backwards onto her butt, and she hasn't yet figured out that she could get back down the way she came up—i.e., lowering one knee to the floor and then the other. So, our fun new game goes like this: She pulls herself up on something, enjoys standing there for a few seconds, and then shrieks at the top of her lungs until I come to her aid. After briefly ignoring her in the hopes that she'll figure it out on her own, I eventually go and help her down ... at which point, nine times out of ten, she immediately pulls herself back up again. And so the cycle repeats, and repeats, and repeats. : )

This new pattern also caused sleeping problems for the first time today at naptime: Elsa kept standing up in her crib and screaming her head off, which obviously wasn't conducive to falling asleep. I had to go back in and lay her down several times before she finally nodded off.

When it comes to napping, I think we've officially switched to just one nap a day. She now usually naps for about an hour and a half (sometimes closer to two), between about noon and 2 p.m. That's it! I would love it if she slept longer, but I knew this day was coming sooner or later, so I might as well get used to it now. And given a choice, I guess I'd take a good nighttime sleeper over a good daytime napper—and that's exactly what we have in Elsa.