• grabs things and put them in her mouth.
• is pushing her bottom two teeth, though the one on her left side is closer to the top of her gum
• can sit up on her own.
• can roll across the room at will.
• gets up on all 4's and rocks.
• uses a pacifier

In conjunction with teething, she's had that nasty little runny nose thing. Her favorite activity lately is gnawing, which while not attractive or fashionable is by far her favorite thing to do. Mike and I bought the baby chew toys. I was eyeing a big bag of pig's ears at Price Club, but remembered that she's a baby not a puppy and left them on the rack.

Yeah, like that was hard. I was just thinking about all the chewing she could get out of it. And think of it, she'd also reduce her risk of gnawing through one of those dumb water-filled things you stick in the fridge. Whenever I've given those to a baby, I feel the need to obsessively check to make sure they haven't punctured it.

Okay, just remember that I'm so obsessive that I'm already shopping for Christmas.

Watching this baby sit up is a total trip. She's obviously so tickled with herself that she can because she'll catch herself and look at you, grin and then promptly fall over. Generally, she uses sitting up just to get a good view of the location, so she can figure out where all the good toys are. Then she goes and rolls or scoots across the floor to get said toys to stuff them in her mouth for a good gnawing.

God forbid, she uses a pacifier. After spending a harrowing day with Screamin' Mimi last Thursday, I decided,"Fuck it, I'm getting her a pacifier, even if she becomes a buttonmouth." She isn't becoming a buttonmouth -- she is an equal opportunity teether..if it tastes good and is chewable, she'll chomp on it. More often than not, she takes the pacifier out of her mouth, looks at it, puts it back in or her favorite is to just spit it out in a big "ptoooey" for sound effect. Cracks me up.

The other night, she rolled across the livingroom and got herself kind of caught in a corner. She can't crawl and scooting only works in a limited area and she rolled into the corner and then couldn't get out. Even worse that that, she got her feet caught in a metal basket and she tried to take her foot out and got it a little twisted, so she squealed to get me to save her. I moved her away from the basket and 5 minutes later she rolled clear across the livingroom and got stuck in the same place again. This time I stuck toys in the way and that slowed her down.

I'm making my mother a Grammy's Braggin' Book of digital photos printed on glossy photo paper and putting in captions, for my mom's birthday. I've been a shit about getting photos and thank you cards sent, so I figure I can do this.

Oh and something totally off topic. Some kid put Russell in a chokehold yesterday at daycare. I was upset and actually continue to be upset about it. We told Russell to simply not play with him and to stay away from him. I told the director of the daycare program that if it happened again, I'd call the police.

Apparently the kid is having emotional problems(whoa, yer kidding?!), however, it's not ok for him to take out his "anger issues" on my kid vis a vis a chokehold administered because he thought Russell had a game piece of his. Not only did Russell not have the game piece, but the kid attacked my kid physically over a freakin' board game. It bothers me that it happened, but what bothers me more is that another kid had to get an adult because none of the so-called supervising adults noticed psychochild putting my kid in a chokehold.

To me, that's just fucked up.