Wow. So. Totally did not mean to take a month-long hiatus. We've been, you know, busy and stuff with kids and stuff around here. It's mostly Tessa's fault. She decided at the beginning of February to walk. Not by herself, but she became obsessed with the idea of walking holding on to a grownup finger. That's all we've been doing. Walking. All other words in her vocabulary were replaced with one: "walk." She would grab my finger, pull me to the front door, and bang on it saying "walk side walk side walk." (So I guess that's two words to fill a month.) All she wanted to do is walk outside, up the street and down, up the neighbors' steps and down. Inside the house we just do laps from waking up to eating to napping. Walk. Occasionally I can grab something as we pass and take it to a new room when we get there, but that has been the extent of my household accomplishments during Tessa's waking hours.
Until Monday. We got back inside from our (can you guess what?) walk, I took off her jacket and hung it up. When I turned around for her to grab my finger, she was halfway across the living room! On her feet! I scrambled for my camera to document, of course, but she was so fast about it that she had reached the other end of the house and had sat down before I could get it out and ready. So I got the camera prepared and set her up to document her second set of steps.
So there you have it. Tessa is walking. And walking. She is off and nearly running. I find if fairly astonishing how much she can do with less than a week of independent practice. She can turn around in a u-turn on one foot; she can bend down and pick something up and then walk again; she can go up and down curbs. On Wednesday (two days after first steps) she walked three blocks by herself. I followed her from 9th Street to 12th. And she can take direction! "Tessa. Put this in the washing machine." Voila, it's in the washing machine! You can tell she's proud and having fun with this new skill. She's a toddler!
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