Entropy, Climbing, and Giving Moms Grey Hair

This is going to be a primarily picture post because I'm too exhausted for much more!

Hallie's full of personality and spunk these days and, for her, is talking up a storm (new words: day, play, 'is it' (as in "What time is it?"), is signing and saying a bunch of letters of the alphabet and numbers, and probably lots more that my toddler-addled and sleep-deprived brain cannot think of right now). But she's a total handful. She's been refusing to eat for me (I can't really blame her--she must be a bit bored of strained pears and goat yogurt, but still the kid does need to eat) and has been refusing naps for Sharon and often for me, too. It doesn't help that she's cooped up because the weather has been quite crappy (lots of rainy days, intermixed with partially rainy days) and she's teething and has major allergies and congestion. She hasn't gone to sleep easily at night for Sharon for a while now, and that's not making things any easier.

When she's awake (most of the time!), she's an exercise in entropy:


My sense is that a swiffer is not enough for this mess!

And she's been climbing, climbing, climbing. This is fine (well sort of fine) at the playground, where she is busily mastering the monkey bars. But not so good at home, where she climbs from the floor to the table next to the sofa, from the sofa to the aforementioned table, and from the sofa to the pack-and-play. She's also been standing on the sofa table, which has us having conniptions (especially since she fell off of it this weekend, either in the mounting or dismounting phase---it happened too fast for us to tell which). Finally, she's been sitting in her doll stroller. Me thinks she is a bit too big for it:




Alas, she has also been using the stroller as a foothold for climbing into the pack and play. We caught her doing this once
yesterday just as it was about to roll out from under her. Good thing she has a pretty decent sense of balance. And, needless to say, it's a good thing she's cute!