Our little mountain goat

We have a climber.  Sara Beth was crawling in the living room floor this week and then pulled herself into a standing position while holding onto the seat cushion of the couch.  Then then proceeded to pull herself up as tall as she could up on her toes in hopes of getting on top of the seat cushion.  I placed my hand as a little footstool about 4 inches off the ground.  She used that and clambered right up onto the couch. Giddy with triumph, Sara Beth proceeded to the back of the couch to climb on top of that as well.  I would put her back on the floor once she reached the top of the couch, and she would go right back to scale the heights of the couch once more.  Now, she practices her climbing skills at the park.  There is a green plastic thingey that is part of the playground equipment with steps at irregular intervals from 4 to 15 inches high.  It is like a rock climbing wall for toddlers, and Sara Beth will shimmy up that, crawl across the play structure, and come down the slide (with some guidance from Heather or I working to prevent her from eating the stray wood chips and from falling).  By the time she is done playing at the park, she is exhausted and would be ready to go to sleep as soon as she gets home, if she didn't need a bath.

Now that she can pull herself up, Sara Beth can get into her toy containers on the shelves on the second level of the book shelf.  She typically will reach in and pull the toys out one at a time to spread across the floor, but occasionally, she will take the quicker approach and just pull the entire toy container off the shelf.

Thats not to say that Sara Beth has forgotten about everything on the ground level.  She will crawl in and make sure there are no toys that have been mistakenly cleaned up and put away.

Here we see Sara Beth showing off her multi-tasking skills.  She has a stuffed "Chatter Bug" in one hand, food in the other hand, and she is somehow also finding ways to play with her musical table.

This week, either due to teething or allergy season (or more likely a combination of both), Sara Beth has had a bit of a stuffy nose.  It has made feeding times extra exciting.  She still preforms her chipmunk impersonations, stuffing as much food as she can into her mouth, but now, since she can't breath through her nose, it causes problems.  While storing her entire meal in her mouth, she will inhale some air as well; needless to say food starts to go down the wrong pipe, so she starts gagging and coughing and spitting the food all back out.  But she never leans, and as soon as she catches her breath, she will proceed to place all the food right back into her mouth again.  Picture is unrelated.