Growing up too fast

I thought Rachel was a pretty fast baby as far as mobility goes (taking her first steps at 9 months, walking by 11 months), but Annie has completely rewritten the book. And she's making me crazy! She rolled over back to tummy at almost exactly 4 months (not really early at all), then rolled tummy to back a week after that, and within another week she was rolling across the room to get whatever she wanted. And if she had miscalculated and the thing was a couple of feet above her head she would scoot forward on her tummy and get to it anyway. At 4 1/2 months. I had an inkling that trouble might be coming at that point. She progressed to army crawling, and this month has been real crawling off and on. Until we went to Alaska. I guess there's something in the water there. We came back with a full out crawler, and within 10 minutes of walking in the door upon our return from Alaska we had this:

Aaaaaahhhhh! Our baby can pull herself up to stand. This was one of my least favorite parts of the whole mobility progression with Rachel, mainly because we have tile everywhere except the bedrooms and the hall to the bedrooms. Hello goose eggs. Luckily so far we've been lucky and haven't had any big falls. Annie is actually pretty good at figuring out how to sit back down when she wants to. But every day she is figuring out something new that she can use to help her stand up. Today it was her crib. I envision her waking up 12 times tonight just to pull herself up to standing so as to cry with that much more gusto at me. I hope I'm wrong.

Rachel (and Mommy and Daddy, or anyone who happens to be sitting on the ground anywhere nearby) happens to be one of Annie's favorite objects to use to help her stand up.

Just after I took that picture Rachel moved away because she was tired of being Annie's pawn, and Annie just stood there balancing for a good 2 seconds. Like 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi seconds. Today she did that several different times, just on her own, letting go because she has no fear, only once today she actually lasted about 5 seconds! She turns 8 months tomorrow. Ridiculous baby! Stop growing up! Or at least slow down! She must have been too impatient to wait in the line in heaven that gave out healthy fear of pain, or any sense of caution.

Now, with Rachel I probably would have thought this was cool that she was doing all this stuff so soon, but this time around I know what's coming: months and months and months of torture at church wanting to run everywhere and not be willing to stay in one place for 2 minutes. She's already into the break-my-back phase of wanting to hold my fingers and walk around the house all day. And if I try to leave her on the ground to play so I can do something crazy like cook dinner, she crawls to me wherever I am, grabs my legs/capris and pulls herself up, then totters dangerously enough that I have to grab a hand/arm so I don't feel like she's going to topple head first onto the tile.

Rachel is my one lifesaver, at least on the days when she enjoys playing with Annie, as she can keep Annie occupied for a good 10 or 15 minutes sometimes before Annie remembers that she wants me to help her walk around.

Such happy sisters!

(Except more and more often Rachel gets into protective mode, trying to keep her turf/toys safe from the destructive baby. Ahhh, sweet sibling yelling matches. :)