So the big news at our house is that Lily is walking!! It's really changed life around here in a big way. She's suddenly this pretty independent little person. When she's awake she just sort of charges around the condo doing her thing. She seems very purposeful and busy. I think if you could get into her mind it would sound something like this:
"Oh oh - there's the blue astronaut guy - why is he over there by himself? Must get to him.. faster faster... got him. OKay now where is the orange astronaut guy? oh oh there he is. OKay - got him. Hmmm only have two hands. How will I hold astro dog too? Oh oh - here's a kitchen cabinet - I think the astronaut guys want to go in there for awhile. Okay phew - mission accomplished. oh oh there's that great yellow ball..." and on and on.
Before she was walking people told me that I'd just wake up one day and she'd be walking. It definitely did not go quite like that. She started taking steps well before her first birthday - maybe early December. But it was only one or two steps at a time and then she'd fall. This went on for a while. Then New Year's Eve in New Jersey she took like 4 steps in a row - it was very cool. A week later she was up to about 12 steps at a time. So now here we are, a day before her 13 month birthday and she's pretty much got this walking thing down. She still falls here and there, and she's definitely got the whole "baby Frankenstein walk" going, but it's working for her. She definitely prefers walking to crawling. Of course one drawback of this newfound mobility is that her tolerance for sitting still (restaurants, the car seat) has definitely decreased. But it's worth it to see her toddling around happily clutching a rubber duck in one hand and a plastic alien on the other with a huge grin on her face. I guess we officially have a toddler on our hands now!
Here are some pictures of Lily during her different stages of walking. Sooner or later we'll get into the modern age and start posting some video.
