Catch and release

Someone started crawling last week. I mean REALLY crawling. And then, about two seconds after she started crawling she started pulling herself up on stuff. The couch, tray tables. She's even tried pulling herself up on my pilates ball, which she has decided (by the way) is also the ULTIMATE toy.

We have hardwood floors throughout the house. And dogs. To that end, we bought some FLOR carpet tiles for our living room, where we spend most of our time. This is Genevieve's play area.

The plan, which is busy paving roads that lead to predictable places, is to do a deep-clean on the floors, do some serious de-cluttering, and repair some of the rough spots before we let our fearless DangerMouse explore. You know, once she's a little more stable, and I'm not all "OHMIGOD! DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH!"

I've been working on teaching her the "lava" game- you know, the one where you have to stay in one place because past the boundaries the floor is LAVA!

(In case you're curious, no, it isn't working. I think you need to have a passing familiarity with what lava is before you know to avoid the lava by staying on the rug. She does seem to think my squealing "You're in the lava!" is pretty funny, though.)

So, for now, we're playing a sort of catch and release game that goes like this:

Genevieve: Crawl to the edge of the rug
Jasmin: Pick up Genevieve. Put her in the middle of the rug.
Genevieve: Pretend to find a toy. Drop toy and dash to the edge of the rug.
Jasmin: Pick up Genevieve. Put her in the middle of the rug.
Repeat until Genevieve gets hungry, tired, or needs to freshen up.

Faster than the speed of the iPhone shutter

One one hand, I'm SO proud of how she's moving. On the other hand, I think to myself, "Remember when she would just snuggle?" (The latter is usually after we've been playing for a good long time.)

I'm pretty sure catch-and-release is how I'm going to lose the baby weight. Or at least, how I'm going to justify all that homemade ice cream I'm eating.