She crawls!

We have a mobile baby on our hands! Gwendoline started crawling this week. She's still pretty slow and a little clumsy, but she gets better at it every day. Just because she's slow doesn't mean she's not getting into things. I've realized that I can't leave her playing on her blanket in the living room while I do dishes in the kitchen anymore. I did that yesterday and within a minute, I heard the "pat-pat" of little hands on the tile behind me; and this morning she made a beeline for the dog food. So life and the pace of our day is changing once again! As you can see in the crawling video below, she is very proud of herself and pauses often to applaud.

Gwendoline's favorite thing to do right now is pull herself up to standing. She would much rather play the "up" game with Daddy (or Mommy when he isn't available) than crawl. She grabs on to your fingers- or any other part of you, really- and pulls herself onto her feet. Thankfully, she hasn't yet realized she can do this to inanimate objects and only pulls up on us, so there's less of a chance of her falling and hurting herself since she is very unsteady on her feet. We call her Elvis due to the way her hips and legs swivel around when she's standing. She also loves to walk while holding on to your fingers and is getting pretty fast. I think she'll transition from crawling to walking fairly quickly, though I don't know how her tiny feet will support her. 

Grandma and Papa Gary visited from the Houston area two weekends ago and we had so much fun! Our big family outing was to the Dallas World Aquarium, which just so happens to be one of my favorite spots in Dallas. Gwendoline had a blast looking around at everything and hearing all the new sounds. She especially liked watching the sting rays swim around in their tank. The adults had a great time, too! There are just so many interesting, entertaining, and sometimes freaky things to see there. Grandma and Papa Gary were also kind enough to babysit for us! Jeph and I were able to attend a wedding together on Friday, go out to dinner for our third wedding anniversary on Saturday, and go to "big church" rather than sit in the family worship room on Sunday.

We are really enjoying this stage of babyhood. The newborn stage was and will always be so precious to us, but things are starting to get fun now!

At the Dallas World Aquarium