Look out cats!

Recording this for posterity...Rhea is officially crawling. She was making her first forward movements earlier in the week and as of Sunday she performed several picture perfect crawls. Monday she found motivation in the cats who were desperately trying to soak up the afternoon sun...she was able to move across the entire room to get to them. Those first "real crawls" were so amazing to watch...she would start out in the typical baby crawl (hands and knees stomach off of the ground)...move herself forward a little way until her arms gave way at which point she would push herself up again and keep on moving. Yesterday she perfected the crawl even more and the time between her arms giving way is stretching out. It is crazy to see her...I was expecting her to go through the "commando" crawling phase but she seems to have skipped that all together (though sometimes when her arms tire out she scootches forward a bit on her stomach trying to get back up on her arms). I wish I had a picture to add to this post but we seemed to have left our camera at a friends house over the weekend (of course right when Rhea starts to REALLY crawl).

This lack of camera may be a blessing in disguise because in the ever pressing mission known as terrorizing the cats...she managed to crawl right into the corner of the side table in the living room. She is now sporting a bruise right under her eye which pains me every time I see it. She was pretty surprised by that sequence of events (not yet knowing that corners hurt and tables tend to be hard and unyielding) and cried with real tears...sometimes looking over her shoulder to squeal menacingly at the table. I know it is just the first of many bumps and bruises we are bound to experience, yet somehow telling myself that does not bring me comfort when I see that blue mark on the cheek of my perfect little baby. I love her determined and adventurous spirit and given the set of parents she was born to...I expect many more scrapes, bruises and scuffles from here on out. I'm just hoping I toughen up a bit and watching her negotiate her relationship with the potentially harmful things out there in the world gets easier as life goes on....