Every Mommy Needs a Rocking Chair

On Thursday, I posted an update on Rylee. At the end of the post, I said I was probably forgetting to mention something, and sure enough, I did. I can't believe I forgot to mention that Rylee is finally "broken" from the bottle, and is now exclusively drinking from a sippy cup! Yay! It only took about two weeks to transition her, and she has done so well. I am so proud of her. She is getting to be such a big girl. Here is a recent picture (taken June 26th, I think) I took of her laying in my lap, drinking out of one of her sippy cups:

Another thing Rylee recently started doing is almost too precious for words, but I'll do my best to explain. My husband, Jordan, works varying hours during the week at his second job, and some days, Rylee doesn't get to see him at all, because he leaves early in the morning before she is awake, and sometimes doesn't get home until hours after she's gone to bed for the night. Rylee loves her daddy, and lately, she's been "talking" about him non-stop. All I hear all day long is "Dada". It's pretty sweet, for sure (although I certainly wouldn't mind hearing a "Mama" mixed in there every now and then). Well, yesterday, Rylee was "looking" for her "Dada", and the next thing I know, she crawls over to our bedroom door (which is off of our living room), flattens on her little belly on the floor, and looks under the crack of the door to try to see if she could find him in there. It was so adorable. After a minute, she looked back at me (I was sitting on the couch watching her) with an expression as if to say, "I can't see him, Mommy." I hated to have to tell her that he wasn't in there. It was just so sweet. This morning, after Jordan left for work again, I asked Rylee where Daddy was, and she did it again. I grabbed the camera real quick and got a picture of it. Here she is, looking for her daddy:

And here she is, sitting outside our door, waiting for him to come out (even though he wasn't really in there):

And here, she's trying to get the camera from Mommy:

I sure do love my sweet girl. She is such a mess. A couple more quick updates: Rylee has recently figured out how to climb onto the hearth of our fireplace, but has NOT yet figured out how to get down. At this very moment, she is sitting up there, looking at me and squealing - her way of asking/telling me to get her down. Here she is:

And, suddenly we have breaking news! No sooner did I type that she hasn't figured out how to get down, and she lays on her belly and scoots to the edge and puts her feet on the floor. I guess she got tired of waiting on me to get her down. Now, she has climbed up into the rocking chair my mom gave me (the real reason I'm writing this post... I'll get to it more in a minute).

You're getting the play-by-play today, people. Anyway, one other thing she has figured out how to do, just in the last day or two, is pull herself up onto our big couch. She is really starting to get all over the place. She definitely keeps me on my toes.
Now, on to what I originally intended to post about today... about a month ago (while Jordan and I were on our anniversary vacation), my mom brought an old rocking chair over to my house for me to rock my babies in. It's not just any rocking chair, though. It's the same antique goose-neck rocking chair my mom used to rock me in when I was a baby. I have wanted a rocking chair since I was pregnant with Rylee, but we couldn't afford to get one. I thought I wanted a glider rocker - which would be nice to have, to get me wrong, but now that I have this rocker from my mom, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It's just what I need, and it's special to me. I feel so relaxed and comforted when I rock in it. Thank you, Mom, for passing on such a special gift to me. It means more to me than I realized it would. Here's the rocker (I covered it with a crocheted afghan my grandma Parker gave to me):