Tomboy

Don't let the hair clip fool you. Stella, in the last week, has morphed into a full on tomboy. There is a little boy that is living in our hotel for the next two months. His name is Tristan and he's 22 months old. He is a very sweet boy and often climbs into my lap for hugs, but he makes me grateful for having a little girl. He is crazy. He would kill himself if the hotel playroom didn't have fully padded floors and walls. His mom and helper are usually both with him in the playroom and it's all they can do to just "play" with him. Stella loves him. The door to the playroom is glass and yesterday he had his face pressed up against it, looking in at us while his mom was taking off her shoes and getting ready to bring him inside. Stella squealed with glee. She then stalked him, crawling as fast as she could and copied everything he did which was at warp speed. If he ran into the bouncy pirate ship (which she normally hates), she followed him full speed right up the ramp. If he climbed up the padded blocks, she would too. She's never done that before. The blocks are about 2 feet high and she kept attempting them by bending her leg up while pushing on the top of the block with her arms. It's hysterical to watch. We were all astonished when she succeeded. It was seriously amazing. And then she did it again, and again. She crawled the blocks to my shoulder level. I was talking to the other moms and sort of had my hands loosely around her waist in case she fell. She had climbed up another level and I casually looked up because I thought her arms were on a higher block with her feet supported by the one below. She was holding her entire body weight by her arms sort of like a vertical push up (though arms bent on top of block) and her feet were actually dangling below. She has become incredibly strong.

Before the playroom, we went to Panda Junction and it was the same thing there. All of a sudden she is climbing all over everything and no longer gets timid when in a group of kids. She gets right in there. She crawled all the way to the other side of the room to see another baby without looking back at me. Same thing today at Gymboree, which is where I took the picture above.

Dan needs to ease up on the Mein Kampf, I think.