First Steps!

Dinke caught me by surprise this morning and decided to walk. It happened faster than I realized what was going on. Really, who are these people who have their cameras ready for this shit? It's not like she issued a press release.

I was in the kitchen spreading some delicious homemade garlic-and-chive cream cheese onto a homemade English muffin--no really, that's what I was doing--when Dinke decided to pull herself up onto my leg. The kids do this all the time. It annoys me when I'm in the kitchen because I need to be moving around, so I've been trying to discourage it. I grabbed her hands, picked her up, moved her a few feet away and put her down on her feet. Lately she has been balancing by herself, so I let go of her hands figuring maybe she'd amuse herself by balancing for awhile before she plopped back down on her bum as usual. But instead she decided to walk back towards me. Only I squealed from complete surprise when she started walking, which in turn surprised her, and she made this shocked face and sat down immediately. She was quiet for a moment, then burst into fits of laughter. She was giggling so hard she couldn't stop for a long time. It was perhaps my happiest moment so far as a parent. I was happy not because she walked at 13 months, not because she walked at 13 months after having spent 11 of those months mostly in a crib, not because she walked at 13 months when she couldn't even crawl when we met her, but because taking those first steps filled her with such unadulterated joy. For the next few hours, any time she stood by herself or took a few steps, she just laughed and laughed. In fact, the constant laughter is sort of hindering her ability to walk, but that's fine by me as long as she's having fun.

The amusing thing about Dinke's timing is that when Xander left the house this morning, he said, "Now don't start walking until I get home." Sorry, Dada. Too late.