She's Our First Child to...

When people think of Moriah, the most obvious characteristic that makes her unique is, of course, the fact that she's our only daughter and has four big brothers.  But being a girl isn't the only thing that she's been the first of our children to do!

She was also the first to walk at the stunningly early age of 14 months!  ;-)  All the rest walked at 18 months or later.

She was also the first to try to climb out of her crib.  The boys never tried that particular stunt, but she did--once.  She fell, but wasn't seriously hurt.  Apparently it was enough, however, to teach her not to try that again!  ;-)

I'm sure there are a number of other things I could include in this list of "Moriah was the first to...", but tonight I'll only mention one more.  She was the first of our children to get out the baby powder and make a mess with it!

This was the scene I found when I walked into her room earlier today...

It's not that bad, I know.  Compared with pictures I've seen from other parents whose offspring have held unsupervised play sessions with a bottle of baby powder, I got off easy.  But even still, I couldn't help but think, "The boys never did this!!"  ;-)

Here's the thing though: Moriah was actually trying to help when this little incident happened.  She is SO quick to imitate and SO eager to take the initiative in finding ways to be helpful.  For example, a night or two ago, as I was getting supper ready, she went to the cupboard, got out a plastic cup for each of her brothers, then carried them one by one to the bathroom sink where she climbed up on the stool and filled them with water before carrying them to the table to place one at each brother's spot.  I didn't tell her to do that, and I didn't show her how to do it.  As a matter of fact, I get water from the kitchen sink where we have a water purifier (although there's really nothing too bad about the water from the bathroom sink), so it's not like Moriah has watched me do what she did.  But she recognized a need ("hey, supper is almost here, and the boys don't have drinks at their places yet!") and figured out a way to meet it.

She does stuff like that A LOT.  I'm always sort of in awe when I watch her do such things.  I feel like there is so much that I never consciously teach her, and yet she sees us, and copies us, and pretty soon she surpasses us!  ;-)

So, back to the baby powder.

As it turned out, Moriah had a dirty diaper, so she got the stool from the upstairs bathroom, carried it into her room, stood on it, pulled open the drawer, got out a clean diaper, also got the baby powder, laid the diaper down and opened it, then sprinkled some baby powder on it.

And also on the changing table and the stool and the floor.  ;-)

I only use baby powder occasionally when I change her diaper, but for whatever reason, Moriah felt like that should be part of that particular diaper change.  And so it was, the powder she had already poured into the new diaper being plenty to fill the need!  ;-)

As I cleaned up the mess Moriah had made, I felt thankful that she hadn't spilled even more baby powder; but I also thought, "Oh, little girl, you keep me on my toes!  In what other areas will you be the first of our children to pull off another stunt?"  :)