My Baby Is Growing Up

Many times I have caught myself in the moment, the moment when I realize Miss Em is no longer an infant, but my baby girl quickly growing up. I think because Daddy and I both feel our family is complete and don't expect for it to grow (*insert - we are always open to whatever God has planned for us though, so if He has more children in store for us we will rejoice in His blessing). Because of this feeling that Miss Em will be our last baby, I think sometimes I have a complete mental block to the fact that she is steadily growing and soon will become more of a toddler rather than my baby. I see other children, friends of ours who have turned 1 year old and begun to walk, and think how much bigger or older they seem, and then I look at my Em and although she's not small, in my eyes she seems like such a baby still.

Friday marked a day where our Miss Em started crawling for real (on her hands and knees rather than the very efficient army crawl she's perfected). There have been many times where she has gotten on all fours, rocked back and forth and taken off, but quickly lowered back down to her comfortable and quick army crawl position. Friday however she was crawling the real deal, and not just crawling. She also realized she could move around on her belly and sit up on her own whenever she wanted to. Here is a shot of her thoroughly enjoying the knobs on the kitchen (play kitchen) stove from her favorite new seated position:

This weekend has also brought about a new question to our parenting, what to do about a baby who likes to bite? The question and fear is out there for us - is our child going to be the child in the nursery who is known as the "biter"? Miss Em has bitten her brother a couple of times this weekend and daddy and myself as well. In the instances where she bit McGee, McGee and I were sitting on the floor and she was trying to crawl up us. I wonder if maybe her biting McGee's arm was just an attempt to use her mouth to pull her up closer to us? Is this just a phase of her exploring with her mouth? Is she just teething and soothing her gums by biting onto nice soft flesh (ouch!)? It's hard to think of my baby girl actually biting out of frustration, so for now I will just try to take it all in stride and do my best to reinforce that biting is not allowed in our home. McGee has taken it upon himself to be the bite police, I hear him telling her, "No biting Em, no bite." I just don't remember this issue with McGee, but then again each child has their own issues and it's nice to know God enjoys giving us a variety to keep us always learning and growing.

Helping us recycle from the baby shower I threw Sunday, but plastic water bottles is probably not the best teether option...