Daddy's Little Dare Devil!

 I am not sure how many tutus and cheerleader skirts are in Callie Mae's future.  She may be like her mom and be trying Ric Flair moves while wrestling boys in the basement of the church at age seven.  She is unbelievably burly right now and has no fear (except one--more on that later!).  She will climb and stand on anything she can.  She will move her little princess car up to the couch or the tv cabinet and use it as a step stool to grab for things we thought were out of her reach.   Yesterday, she and I went to a Mommy/Baby church function and I was about the only mom sweating while trying to contain her child.  There were mostly boy babies there and Callie showed them up with her walking ability, energy and roughness!  

 Is this not a "little Matt" on a pink car?  Her lucky dog snoopy shirt is from Aunt Michelle.

We have really been enjoying the spring weather.  Callie loves to go outside and try to eat mulch and walk on the sidewalks.  (Notice the new shoes!)

 I think what she enjoys most is walking back up to the front door and taunting the cats.  We have let them out some too!

 Callie likes to make friends at the park (THAT she got from her mother!)

Here comes trouble!  Daddy has to race to catch up before she reaches the slide on her own!

 She will try to walk down if you aren't there to stop her!

 Here she comes!  Look how wild.  This particular time she went down all by herself.

 I think she prefers going down with Mommy.

 But climbing back up is her favorite thing!  We have video of her climbing the entire way back up with a little help with her footing. She was determined!

 And, like mommy, she enjoys swinging.  But like Daddy, she will throw-up if she stays on too long!

The thing that Callie does seem to be afraid of right now is baths.  I don't  know what happened this week to scare her.  Maybe she had a bad dream.  But one night she was enjoying her bath as usual and the next night she screamed through it.  I thought it was just a one night thing but she has screamed every night since.  So baths last about two minutes with her crying the entire time, turning bright red and quivering with fright.  It is so pitiful.  She won't sit down in the water and screams harder when I pour water onto her head.  I hope she gets over this soon and that it won't include a fear of the pool, lake or ocean this summer.  I am hoping that a new fun bath toy might help because we have tried everything else.  Matt is very concerned about this and even put on his swim trunks and got in with her the other night.  I don't think I have ever loved him more than that moment when he was sitting in three inches of water surrounded by rubber duckies and wind-up sea animals and singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad".  I wish I could have gotten a picture to share!  She may be my little sidekick but she is a Daddy's girl all the way and he is the best daddy to her.  She had a really bad night of sleep last night (surprising after such an active day and which explains why I am blogging right now instead of sitting in church!) and I think he sang that song 20 times while trying to rock her back to sleep.  And when I finally just got up with her and let her play in the family room at three in the morning, she would yell "Da-da!" as loud as she could to try to get him to come play with her.   He is always there with words of encouragement or good advice when I am at my whits end or exhausted from mommy duty.  Sometimes he will even give me a little hug and groggily say, "good job" when I return to bed from one of the two or three night-feedings that she still insists on.  He might be doing that in his sleep but it makes me feel better none the less!