This Week in Mommyhood

Did you see that thing zooming by?? That was my daughter! Cati crawled on all fours this week! Ahhh! Now I'm in trouble; lots and lots of trouble. As if my daughter couldn't get any cuter, she is absolutely to die for when she crawls. I don't think I have ever seen anything as cute as her crawling. She can crawl on all fours but doesn't want to all the time because it's much slower than her army crawling.

Speaking of crawling, why is it that she is obsessed with crawling toward the Perla's food bowl? Cati will be in her room and crawl out to my room just so that she can get to the dog bowl. No matter where I put her, she crawls to the dog bowl and loves to dip her hand in the bowl. She also likes to splash in Perla's water bowl. It drives me nuts!

Cati knows how to go from sitting to crawling already, but this week she went from crawling to sitting. She isn't doing it consistently just yet, but you can tell she is constantly trying. She is pushing her body and this is the position she is in before she gets to sitting:

Why is it that learning how to crawl is synonymous with learning how to climb? Nothing is off limits at this point. Cati will crawl to everything and try to climb on everything. The funny thing is that I know exactly when she is going to try to climb onto something because she will army crawl toward it and then get on all fours before placing her arms on the object and pulling herself up. I let her get to the point where she's on her knees but I stop her before she gets into a full blown standing position because I'm afraid she's going to bump her head since she's very wobbly when standing.

There is no doubt Cati is attached to me. The first sign was how she would look at me when she was crawling away from me. She would crawl a few feet, stop to look at me, and would only continue to crawl forward if I gave her an encouraging smile. The next sign was when she was on the ground surrounded by people and she crawled toward me and reached out for my hands. The last sign was when she'd search the room for me and cry if she couldn't see me or if I was too far for her to reach. It's little things like this that make motherhood and all the work that goes into it so worth every ounce of frustration and exhaustion.

Now onto food. Cati hated corn and everything it touched. She didn't care for pears and was lukewarm toward apples (oh yeah, I haven't posted that one yet. Oops!). The only way I have been able to get Cati to eat fruits is if I mix them in with her veggies. I think from now on I just need to mix all new foods with something she already like instead of introducing it by itself. I have gotten creative with her veggies and each day she gets a combination of veggies. Cati's favorite combination is carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash, but she'll eat just about anything as long as squash or sweet potatoes are involved.

Fatherhood comes later than motherhood. I have always said that a woman becomes a mother long before a man becomes a father. Alex said he finally felt like a father this week. When I asked him why he told me it was because of how responsive Cati was to him telling her no. Go figure. It takes telling Cati "no, don't touch" for him to feel like a daddy.

This was a very social week for Cati. She had two playdates: one with 2-month old Nicolas and the other with 4-month old Alyssa. Then Alex's family came over. It was so much fun seeing Cati with the younger babies because it was cool seeing the developmental differences between them. It was also cool to think that Cati was once at that stage. It's hard for me to really appreciate how much Cati has grown because I am with her everyday but when I see her with younger babies I'm able to really see how much she has changed in such a short amount of time.

So yeah, my baby is moving further and further away from being a baby. My hearts breaks just a little thinking about that.