Some Silliness

Hazel isn't quite crawling, but she does an Army-crawl on her belly. She works very hard to get up on her knees but can't seem to do it at the same time as she is on her hands yet. Any day now. Like many babies, she is moving backwards before she moves forwards, which is incredibly frustrating since the toy in front of her that she desperately wants to get her hands on just moves further way the harder she works. She is pretty mobile now, so I'm not able to leave her to play on her blanket while I run to the bathroom. I've started to build every morning a little pen out of pillows and couch cushions around the edges of her blanket. Soon even this won't hold her, but for now it keeps her contained to a little 3-foot square area for the most part. Every night I disassemble it, and every morning it is built again.

Hazel has recently "noticed" our dogs and she is in love. The little dog Flossie follows here everywhere she goes and Hazel loves to reach out and grab a handful of her fur. Flossie loves to lick her all over her face and Hazel delights in it, but I do not. Hector is mostly uninterested in Hazel, but she loves him. Whenever he walks by she starts laughing and reaching out her arms. When he keeps walking on by ignoring her, she looks terribly let down.

Hazel has finally discovered the Exersaucer! It says it can be for babies from 4 months, but when we put her in it, she just hung there with her arms at her sides, staring at us with the same perplexed expression as her car-seat picture when she was 2 days old. Something happened in her little brain because when we put her in it the other day, she went wild with laughter and grunts and "oooooo"s and "ahhhhhh"s. Then she became very focused and "worked" on all of the toys in bizarre, highly attentive and methodical manner.