Out Like A Lion And Still Teething

So this month has been a pretty interesting one. On the 9th Alaina attempted at walking and sort of failed. She took a step but fell down right after. The following day she took a step and stayed standing! We're counting the latter as her first step, but I wouldn't say she's walking yet. Yesterday she did two little shuffle steps, but she's too smart and knows that crawling is less dangerous. :) She will go wherever you want her to if you let her hold your fingers though. Grandpa Lee has found that Alaina likes him more if he does this.

So about the teething: Two weeks ago Alaina was up every hour or so through the night, had a slight fever and was chewing on EVERYTHING. We were giving her tylanol and alternating between teething tablets and orajel, but nothing seemed to work. She was refusing to eat anything and went about 24 hours without any liquids, so we went into the doctor to see if there was something else on top of the teething. Apparently she is just an "extreme teether" and that was that. Currently she has at least one, maybe two that have broken through, and 4 more coming up. Six at once is not something I'd wish for, especially when they come slowly- she's been cutting since Christmas! Oh, and I was really mad that nobody told us when we could up her tylanol dosage- we were giving her 1/3 of what she could have, hardly putting a dent in her pain! Why don't doctors give you a chart of weight and dosage? Wouldn't that make sense? Anyway, so she is doing a lot better now that we can relieve some of the pain that she has, but it's still no picnic.

A couple of days ago I was folding laundry and Alaina decided to help. She ended up pushing the hamper around all over the front room. It was pretty funny.
It's interesting to see how much she learns every day. She has now discovered that pulling all the wipes out is super cool, and she also cheats with her jack-in-the-box. She just pulls on the little latch that keeps the lid down instead of cranking the handle! Alaina's also been doing really well with solid foods and feeding herself. She used to keep a cheerio in her fist and just suck on her whole hand, but now she can put the whole thing in her mouth and crunches on it. Alaina is starting to recognize animals, and she loves dogs. I really hope this won't cause a problem with begging for a pet later on.
The other day I was making dinner and Cory was (supposed to be) watching Alaina. He didn't put up our baby gate and the next thing we know she's missing. We looked everywhere, and finally Cory went to check the bathroom. Sure enough, Alaina had crawled in there and closed the door. She thought it was the funniest thing, and now she tries to close that door all the time.

I'm reminiscing as I write this next paragraph- ya know that day when it was over 70 degrees and you didn't even need a jacket and it was like Spring was here? Well now it's snowing all week and I wonder if we'll ever get to go to the park again!! Alaina had a great time on the swings. She wasn't so sure about the slide though.

Saturday Marci, Larry and Heidee came up for a visit. Heidee babysat for us while we went to the temple and it was so nice to do an endowment session. We haven't done one since I got pregnant because I just couldn't sit that long, so we would do more sealings. Larry is Deaf, so they had a monitor up with captions and interpreters for him. I got so much more out of it because I could read the captions and watch the signing as I listened to it, so it was easier to listen.