Struggling to keep up

The sun has finally returned after almost a straight month of rain.  We passed the rainy weeks by going to swim class, setting up our camping tent in the living room (she and the cats LOVE it - so it's now set up in the attic) and trying to do new things to keep her busy... her first trip to Ikea, heading to the outdoor outfitter in town to wander through their stuff, and playing with friends.  It's generally been working and she's been a busy girl - she eagerly climbs on furniture now (yikes, we have a climber!), her molars are still coming in (ouch), and she's trying just about any new word she hears in conversation (this week: thunder, disgusting, oopsie-doopsie, good girl).  She's close to putting words together and has been practicing her manners (please and thank you, and starting on excuse me) so everyday is a new adventure in communication with her.

We're continuing swim lessons through the fall (she's really enjoying it and getting the hang of it now) and have signed her up for a music class that starts next month (we did a trial class last week and there was no sign of terrible songs like The Wheels on the Bus, so we'll give it a try, lol).
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So that was all from a post from AUGUST - whoops, so much for staying on top of things, that draft was sitting in my folder waiting to be finished, but instead I'm just jumping to where we are now.  We've been camping, had our first family photos, visited the pumpkin patch, and are finally back to biking (hooray!).  C's a chatterbox now with easily over 100 words, adding new ones daily as she hears them and there is rarely a word she says we can't understand.  Said her first sentence last month as we were packing up to go camping at Oscar Scherer State Park: "Baby fall down" - she calls herself Baby and as we were doing chores in the yard she took a digger and announced it before picking herself up and going about her business - Wade and I were so surprised and it made us laugh.  She also regularly says "bless you" now when we cough or sneeze which is pretty funny because we didn't even try teaching it to her, she just picked it up on her own!

We also finally made time to wage war on taking back the yard.  It had become quite over grown and was in desperate need of mulching so we picked a weekend for Granzie and Poppi to stay with us to play with C for the weekend while Wade and I worked in the yard.  We hacked, weeded, planted, and mulched and the yard looks lovely again (we were starting to wonder if coyotes were nesting in our yard - true story, we have coyotes here!).  It's so nice to have it looking tidy and mulched again and all the weeding and trimming actually made the yard feel bigger so there's more room for C to run and explore - right now her favorite is picking flowers and eating mulberries right off the tree.  Our veggies beds are also looking good and full of plants and C's been enjoying the fresh lettuce.

We're still doing swim classes and I think she's almost ready to move up to the toddler group class (right now she and I swim together in class, but the group class is just with the teacher); she is enjoying music class and some of the songs have become good soothers when she has a hard time settling down to nap (she loves music).  She's also been working on potty training, and has it down pretty well, except when she's feeling lazy then she just goes in her diaper.  Otherwise she runs around mostly without a diaper (or any bottoms) and we haven't had an accident in weeks.  It'll be tough when it's finally cold and we can't let her run around without bottoms anymore!

She just finished getting her canine teeth (even worse than molars!) and having a growth spurt and some mental development too - she's running now, climbs all over and up on things, connecting lots of words, and remembers things from weeks ago (for instance if you ask her what she saw camping - she'll tell you about the Bald Eagle that buzzed the playground while she was on the slide).  She also recently just started toddler tantrums, so that's been a new development that took us by surprise.  She also is having fun making all sorts of faces to make us laugh and we like to make a game of it.  Her scowl face is sure to get a laugh out of everyone and she knows it.

I just uploaded a bunch of pictures, so check them out on our Picasa site.   Enjoy!