Not content with her success at learning to crawl, Liesl has started pulling up to standing. She is constantly standing up, especially when we try to put her down to sleep in her crib, but really anywhere she can. She'll use furniture, bathtubs, people's legs - she really just wants to stand. She's not nearly as skilled at sitting back down, of course, and so there have been some head bonks recently. She's even trying out cruising, from one piece of furniture to another, and pushing a small chair in front of her and following it. It's been a big month for movement - four weeks ago she was totally stationary, and now she's breaking out all over.
She is also quickly developing and demonstrating her personality. Courtenay at daycare has described her as a "social butterfly", who immediately crawls over to the largest group of children to see what they're doing and play with them. She also isn't afraid of any of them, and will steal toys from the bigger kids. Alysa at daycare declares that she is "strong-willed" and "stubborn", refusing to take any milk from any bottle or sippy cup, and immediately standing up to play when they put her down to sleep. They have to have a wrestling match and pin her down in order to get her to take a nap. She falls over and doesn't cry, but if you thwart her attempts to roll over and stand up, or take away something she wants, she'll wail.
Around here, we have started calling her an assortment of affectionate nicknames - the monster, the menace, and the wrecker. She wants to play with whatever Sebastian is playing with, and will wreck his neat lines of cars, his carefully set up train tracks, his puzzles. Diaper changes are a full-on wrestling match - I put her down and she immediately flips over and tries to crawl away. We had a playdate with our friends Marci, Matthew and Sarah, and Mattie called our baby "Diesel", which we really liked. It sort of encapsulates her current no-holds-barred approach to the world.
It is so funny to have a baby like this, so different in every way from Sebastian. Seb was shy at daycare, cautious around the other kids and not terribly interested in interacting with them. He wouldn't sleep for us at home, but slept easily at daycare right from the start. He ate absolutely everything, and Liesl is much picker. Seb is an observer still, and often afraid of new experiences and new people, whereas Liesl is always beaming her biggest smile at random strangers. It's such fun. I think she's going to be a terror for years to come. :)
