Cheerios and acrobatics

This morning I've found myself laughing a lot. Not a bad way to start a morning that had me awake at 6 am to the sounds of Charlotte coughing and hacking away in the room next to me. From the second she woke up today, she was in a silly mood. When I went in to get her from her room she greeted me with a big, goofy, snotty smile and said "Mama!" then she proceeded to run down the hall to the front room, pull the curtains apart and giggle. At what, I'm not sure, but obviously she was happy to be awake, which made it easier for me to be up, too. After a few little impromptu dances, she was ready for breakfast. Cherrios, banana and orange juice. She was determined to feed herself the cereal today, as you can see. Most of the milk ended up on her legs or the floor, and she never really got more than 1 or 2 Cherrios in her mouth per spoonful. It took about 40 minutes for her to eat, and that was before she even got to the banana.

After breakfast, she was ready for play time. Lately this has included a lot of acrobatic and/or climbing activities. Today she had located her pink Ikea stool (last night I tried to hide it to avoid this type of thing) and placed it carefully on top of her Dora the Explorer mini-couch. She then proceeded to climb onto the couch and then got on top of the stool, soon standing upright. She looked so proud. From here she tried to carry her stool, which isn't heavy but is awkward, to Mom & Dad's room. Once there she put the stool on the bed (our bed is quite low to the ground and she can easily climb on to it) and then, once again, climbed on to the stool. Soon enough, she was standing on the stool, very pleased with herself.

Despite her cheery mood and all of these enjoyable moments this morning, we had to skip going to Montessori. Her cough is still quite bad, her nose is runny and she still has a bit of a fever. She's sleeping now, and my hope is that when she wakes up, she'll be just as happy as she was when she went down.