Forced Rest

I finally caught the most recent of Sam's colds on Tuesday. I have been really lucky this year, and haven't had any really bad sicknesses, with the exception of the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad evening back in August. So, I suppose it was about time that I picked up some of her germs :-) It's been a rough snot-filled, sinus-pressure, cough-inducing three days, but at least I'm getting it out of my system now and will be all rested up and back to my chipper self for Stonecat next Saturday! The cold also means that my taper has been a bit more dramatic than intended, with only two days of running this week so far, but then again, not much about my training for this race has read like a typical training plan, so maybe it's fitting :-)

Since there isn't much to report on the training front, I thought I'd share some of Sam news instead. Much more fun to read about, right?!

~ On Wednesday night, while I was feeding her dinner, she discovered that she could put her little index finger in the hole in the Ditalini pasta. Once the pasta was on her fingertip, she picked up her hand and sort of looked at the pasta, as if to say, hmmm, how did you get here?, and then promptly put her finger in her mouth, happily chomped away and repeated the action with the rest of her pasta. It is very cute.

~ She now knows how to turn off the light in her room. When I get her up in the morning, we sit in the dark for a little while and cuddle, and then I stand up with her in my arms and we go over to the light switch and I turn the light on. She immediately starts pointing at the switch and I ask her if she would like to turn the light out for me. She very determinedly and precisely puts her index finger on the light switch and pushes down to turn the light off. Sometimes it takes a few tries, but she is so proud of herself when the light goes off and the room goes dark :-) We repeat this "feat" several times each morning.

~ She has discovered that our coffee table has a drawer, and will pull herself up at the edge of the table so that she can open the drawer and pull out what is inside. One of the things she discovered last week was a deck of cards. These cards are this sort of funky see-through plastic material housed in a clear plastic box, so they're perfect for her. She will shake the box and pull on either side of it to get it open and all the cards spill out. Then she laughs and starts playing with the cards, pushing and pulling at the pile, in a way which reminds me of the scenes you might see on TV where someone is on a bed surrounded by dollar bills, excitedly throwing and picking up the money. If I take a few cards and put them back in the box and hand it to her, she will shake it and then pull it open. I don't know why this game is so fascinating, but it is.

~ When she holds something, like a book or one of her bath toys, she will curiously turn it all around, as if to discover and explore all the possible angles and sides of the item. One of her bath toys is a turtle-type thing with the shell and four legs below. She will systematically put each "leg" in her mouth to chew on while she sits in the bathtub. Do other kids do this?!

~ We have a "baby's first toothbrush" for her, which probably isn't really necessary since she only has 1 1/2 teeth, that she chomps on at the end of bathtime. She will drop it in the water and then look at us while she uses her hands to search around at the bottom of her bathtub to find it. When her fingers grasp it, she will bring it out of the water and look at us in triumph and clap :-)

~ We are working on getting her to walk between us. She has taken maybe a step and a half independently here and there when we do this, which is exciting, but I wouldn't quite call it walking yet. But what is so cute is that when when kneel down for her to walk to us, she gets so excited she doesn't walk straight and she ends up either veering to one side or the other or basically falling into our arms :-) Oh well, we'll get the walking thing down at some point!