Oh the places you will go!

Cadence has reached all sorts of milestones... rather quickly. And they're not the fun ones like first smile, or first laugh, or first shaky steps.

She's mastered climbing. Mastered it so well she kept getting mad when the pews at church were a smidge higher than our couch and chair at home and she couldn't get her leg high enough. All she needs is another 1/4" and I'm sure she'll have even that down. Unfortunately, the bookshelf with our paperbacks and the cat food is tucked in the corner with our chair blocking it. Or rather, the chair was blocking it. Now that Cadence can climb, neither the books nor the cat food are safe. We have to look into rearranging (though with how little wall space we have in our living room, I don't know how!).

Ah yes, Cadence can also climb into the computer chair. I downloaded a program called "Toddler Keys" that locks the cd-drives of the computer, the power button, and you can quickly lock the keyboard and mouse. It's a simple program. Once I lock the keyboard and mouse it switches to a black screen that displays random pictures and sounds I downloaded and put in a special folder with the program. Cadence loves it. She'll sit in the chair and press any key she wants. It's like the kneebouncers.com I raved about a little while back, except she can't accidentally press a key that messes things up. Nor can she touch the power button on the keyboard or tower and shut off the computer. The only way to do that is to use the start menu, which she hasn't mastered... yet.

She can, however, turn the TV on and off. And she loves practicing this skill. I almost have to have the remote nearby if I'm watching TV while feeding Megan, or my TV enjoyment is decided entirely on the Russian Roulette of when Cadence grows bored with the button. Fifty-fifty shot she'll leave it off as she runs away cackling.

And the one that has me the most nervous... she's figuring out doorknobs. I'm not sure she's ever successfully opened one. James suspects she has, as she has somehow gotten into our room when we're sure the door was closed. But none of the doors in this apartment close properly without a little effort (except Cadence's. Her closes very easily and she loves closing it), so I suspect she just had to push to open it. However, I have seen her getting onto her tippy toes and reaching for a good grasp on the front door. She's a little too smart, my girl is. We need to get in the habit of locking the deadbolt. Even during the day, it seems.

And final milestone: She's transitioned into her toddler bed. I thought we might have some issues, but she didn't. Only day 3 and she's sleeping in it like a pro, perfectly content. This morning, she did discover she can get herself out of bed and go play instead of waiting for me (previously she had to sit in her crib and wait for me). Hopefully, this doesn't become a 6am issue... I guess tomorrow morning will tell for sure! If she continues to sleep until 7:30-8am and then gets herself up, that's fine.

Oh wait, there's one more milestone: We're down to only one bottle a day, and that's only 4oz at night, right after bath time (keeps her calm while I get her dressed) and before bedtime. She gave up her naptime bottle without a fight and I recently dropped her morning bottle and went straight to breakfast. She's not too fond of the change yet. She's used to getting a bottle while I change her in the morning, but she'll figure it out soon and be happy with it. So yes, we're almost off the bottle entirely. Which leaves me with eight cans of formula in my pantry, hmm... Any readers formula feeding their kids?

On to Megan...

Megan's less of a terror, but becoming more of a handful. She's very much a people person. Toys and such do not hold her interest. She wants faces and voices and warm skin. She is smiling like crazy. And we have semi-successfully hammered out a schedule of sorts. Normally I'm all about baby-led schedules. Cadence always set her own schedule, but, then, Cadence slept well at night from day 1. Megan didn't. But a day or two of not letting her rest too peacefully during the day, and she slipped right into a routine that works for both of us. She's even sleeping well at night! The past three nights, she's slept for 3-4 hours straight from the time I put her down to when I carry her out into the front room in the morning, so only two feedings (and one of them is right before wake-up time, so if she could just sleep a little longer, we could possibly be down to only one!). Hopefully, the past 3 or 4 days haven't been a fluke.

ETA: For what it's worth, I started this entry about 7 hours before I actually published it. Unfortunately, I've been having computer problems that came to a head in the midst of writing it. Normally a restart, and 10-15 minutes of patience, is all I needed to get it up and running, but this time, the whole system just crashed. I used up my whole arsenal of tricks, with no luck. So I called in my dad, who came over. Ended up reformatting the entire thing. Luckily, I'd been expecting it and had everything backed up already. Now I have to redownload programs and the like, but hopefully the computer will function again!