A better day

As I predicted last night today went much better than yesterday and the day before. It was so good, in fact, that this evening after dinner I had enough patience left in me to let help Rachel make cookies and let her help me do the dishes.

She was thrilled. Making cookies is one of her favorite things to do. And since the last cookies that we made were chocolate chip…so I didn’t have any…I thought it was only fair that we make some non-chocolate cookies. She helped cream the butter (and ate several forkfuls), she helped measure the sugar (and flung about 1/8 of a cup all over the kitchen floor), she helped crack the egg (and got it all over her hands), she helped level the flour with a butter knife (because I wouldn’t let her measure it after the sugar incident) and still managed to get flour all over herself, and she helped mix it all together (and made dough fly all over the place). Somehow I managed to stay sane through all of it.

And then she wanted to help me wash dishes. I like that her idea of helping me wash dishes is grabbing some rubber duckies and splashing water all over the place. She may have put a bowl or two in the drying rack, but other than that, she just experimented with pouring and floating.

She kept playing long after I had finished washing the dishes.

Miriam was such a tired girl today. She probably napped for four hours this afternoon. We couldn’t do anything to wake her up. She’s still into sucking her thumbs. We still don’t mind.

The minute after I snapped that picture of her sleeping, though, her eyes flew open (though her thumb stayed put) and she’s been awake ever since.

We put her in her bouncy chair to play while we made cookies. She had a great time, mostly because Rachel would run over every few minutes and bat at the toys for her. Rachel’s so effective at getting the toys to move and Miriam isn’t yet, so eventually Miriam gave up trying to hit them at all and would just squawk at Rachel to do it for her while she sat back and cuddled a blankey (that Rachel got for her).

She’s got Rachel wrapped around her little finger. Observe her sad puppy-dog face turning into happy giggles, the little manipulator!

   

Later we put her down for some tummy time and she started chomping on her dangly toys like she was trying to eat a donut off a string. It was so funny.

 

Miriam has been so drooly lately. The front of her shirt is always damp and when I hold her she chomps on my hand until I have baby saliva running down my arms. It shouldn’t be possible to have that much drool in such a little person.

Here she is getting ready for a big drip:

And thar she goes:

I know that is just what you all wanted to see since baby drool is so clearly entertaining.

So, yes, today was nice, which is a welcome change from the past few days (oh, boy)!