I Wish a Kiss could make it ALL better

Eliza's been taking on the world lately! She's been doing some funny versions of a crawl and has started pulling herself to standing and just a little bit of "cruisin'" around or walking sideways with the support of the furniture.

With these new impressive skills have come some setbacks, however. I seriously am shocked that Eliza's not black and blue! Steve and I were both saying, we feel very blessed that our squirmy, accident-prone babe has remained relatively unscathed from all of her tumbles and oops! moments (that are probably mostly due to her fairly incompetent first-time parents).

Ouch #1 Thursday morning I woke up hearing Eliza just SCREAMING her lungs out-- and it was a different sort of cry than her usual morning greeting. This cry was more shrill and frantic. I opened the door to her nursery and found her standing up against the railing of her crib (impressive...?), however, she was almost doubled over because the railing only came up to about her tummy level! Her head/mouth was resting on her arms, and she had slobbered all over her little arm.

I scooped her up as quick as I could and she clung to me as her cries settled into little hiccups against my chest. I've seen her pull herself up to standing like at the couch or something, but lots of times she just gets too afraid to let go and fall back to the ground, so she just stands there until I help her down-- So I guess that's what had happened.

Don't worry, though. We moved the crib down to the lower position so she can't reach the top of the railing (for now!). I had nightmares the next 24 hrs of her flipping over her railing to her death. I kept waking up thinking I heard bumps that just turned out to be our wild night-owl cat, Finnegan.
Ouch #2 Eliza also has recently flipped off our bed-- Steve and I still aren't exactly sure how that happened. One of us turned our back and all of a sudden she was flat on her back on the ground and bumped her head on the way down. The second before she had previously been facing the opposite direction lying on her tummy.

(Isn't this the cutest shirt- Goodwill $1!)

Ouch #3 I had her next to me on our big ikea chair getting ready to go outside one afternoon, and I just leaned down to pick up her shoe and BUMP, she flipped over onto the ground and landed on a little plastic block too.

Ouch #4 Another night we were getting her jammies on, and don't ask us why, but we were trying to put her jammies on while she was standing up on her changing table. Steve was supporting her under her arms while I was trying to shove her leg into the leg hole (another reason we love blanket sleepers, or sleep blankets, whatever they're called), and I guess Steve thought I was taking her because of how I was tugging on her leg/jammies and he let go and Eliza TIPPED over bonking into the railing before I caught her.

Ouch #5 One afternoon Eliza was standing up between my legs while I was sitting in a chair at the computer when all of a sudden Eliza let go and slipped through my arm and legs and bonked her head on the corner of the computer desk. I had just called Steve at work, and all I had gotten out was a, "Hey, How's it goin'?" when suddenly Eliza fell and started WAILING, and I was like, I gotta go! and hung up. Not a pleasant phone call, I'm sure (for any of us, but especially Steve... and Eliza).

Eliza has gotten SO squirmy, it's so hard to pin her down long enough to even take a dirty diaper off of her, let alone put a clean one on before she's sitting herself back up and taking off to find some other precarious situation to get into. We keep trying to distract her with pacifiers or crackers, but that only works about 40% of the time.

She's such a wild woman, I feel like she's in constant danger-- and when these accidents or owies happen, I feel SO so so so so TERRIBLE. She screams out and big whoppin tears cascade down her red little cheeks. Poor girl. I feel like bubble wrapping our whole apartment... or somehow finding a way to bubble wrap her, if I could!

I promise, we really do try to be careful!

Rest assured, we do know not to leave Eliza here unattended, but she LOVES playing here in the bathroom sink, knocking all of our hygiene products into the sink with her and talking and waving at us in the mirror.

Ouch #6 Oh, and tonight- I was nursing Eliza during my dinner break from work while I tried to eat my tuna casserole from a bowl Steve had served up for me (such a great house-husband *more about that later*), when Eliza decided to turn and grab my bowl and managed to dip her hand into the HOT casserole and burnt her little hand!!

She was just screaming-- I think that it scared her since it probably just kept stinging/burning even after I had wiped her hand clean and held her to me. We dipped it into cold water and wrapped it in a cold, wet washcloth. It still took a little while before she was calm enough to start nursing again. So sad!

And yes, all of these accidents make me feel like a bad parent. So much guilt in this parenting world!

So if anyone has some bubble wrap or pillows they want to donate, let me know!

Eliza LOVES her books! They're her favorite toy, hands down.

On another note, I've decided that Steve makes a better "house-husband" than I make a "house-wife." At least lately. We've had a stressful time lately buying health insurance and a new car. Steve has totally picked up my slack and recently made some AMAZING dinners including a pork roast with sweet potatoes and carrots, pad thai, chicken stir fry, tuna casserole (burn culprit), oven (german) pancakes, and some great salads too!

I made an order in to Papa Johns for a buy one get one free coupon. Hmm...

And Steve has gotten so sweet getting Eliza to bed lately on the nights I've been working, getting CPR supervised, and doing last-week-o-the-month visiting teaching. Thanks, Steve-o/daddy-o!


Check it out:
It's so hard being a girl.
Crawling in a dress is a complicated task!

This moment constituted most of Steve and Eliza's afternoon today.