The Steinhauer Adventure: A Cautious Personality

Chase is 14 and a half months old now. I often catch myself marveling at this little person and feeling a little sad that it's all happening so fast. We were finally blessed with a gorgeous weather yesterday after a few weeks of rain and chilly air, so Chase and I, along with the boys, had a fun afternoon laying on a blanket in our backyard studying the grass, the trees, the poofy clouds, and the blue sky. When she wanted to rest her eyes, Chase would plop her little chubby body in my arms, nuzzle in, stick her thumb in her mouth, close her eyes, and give a long heaving sigh. It took all that I had to not tear up when she buried her little face into my chest. I feel so very blessed everyday to be a part of her life. She seems to be growing up at a warp speed and is in the phase of repeating everything she hears. Some examples of yesterday word list: "teeeee" (tree),"shvoomm" (mushroom), "oderweh" (the other way), and amen (she repeated it after a prayer teddy bear at bed time). She can identify her nose and eyes when I ask where they are and has just added elephant to the list of sign language she knows. It's amazing what a sponge her little brain is at this age. I can pile books in front of her and run downstairs to put a load of laundry in the washer and come back to find her completely engross in the pages that she doesn't notice that I am back. She still loves to crawl and cruise and has shown little interest in walking on her own without holding our hands. I am really not worried about it since she just started crawling in earnest a few months ago although have made an appointment with a physical therapist, who specializes in early childhood development, to evaluate the way we play to make sure that I am on the right track in encouraging her motor skill development. As we have seen with Chase, she does everything at her own pace. She takes her time to intimately study everything and every movement around her for months before deciding that it is the right time for her to do a certain task. We have seen this with rolling and crawling. You should have seen her at the beach. She spent hours just sitting on the beach moving sand from one palm to another, feeling the grains between her tiny fingers, closely watching how it moved with the water and on her skin. Looks like our hope of her becoming a scientist is a bit closer to fruition :). When I was telling the therapist about Chase, she said to me "I read an article not too long ago describing the behavior and personality of many slow walkers as "cautious" and I think that sounds a lot like your little daughter." I don't think there have been truer words used to describe my baby. She is very cautious about everything and is slow to warm up to new people and environment. She needs time to familiarize herself with it before loosening up and just letting out her lively personality again. But once she does, you'd better be sure that you are on your A-game because she'll put your energy to the test!

Now since I've been lazy at updating, you will get a mother load of pictures in one go. If you are quiet enough, you can hear my mother slowly scribbling my name back on to her will with a pencil.

I know you are green with envy of Wil's $800-hooptie. Our very own European Beauty.

We had big plans for the last weekend, but it was cold and we got lazy. So we hung around Kaiserslautern and enjoyed their beautiful parks. This set came from their Dinosaur Garden. My battery died and I forgot a spare set, so we only have pictures of the garden and not so much of the dinosaurs. You win some and you lose some.