Walker, Baby Ranger

My baby girl is walking! She's a walker, she walks, she's walking. I can't get over it. She's been walking a little over a month now - though the first several attempts were more like her best imitation of a Buster Keaton comedy short. It was "early" for her to walk by 10.5 months, but it was actually a long time coming for her.

Weeks before her first steps she would stand up all by herself, let go....lean.....and then, plop! Again and again we would get out the camera, get all amped up and then giggle and groan with every failed attempt.

Everyone told us not to encourage it..."You won't want her to walk as soon as she gets going! She will be into everything!" But we couldn't help ourselves! Her little face would light up with pride as she would shift her weight to her tippy toes and reach out her arms, as if dancing with an imaginary partner.

Now, within just a few weeks, she can already get to a standing/walking position on her own without holding onto anything. (She's brilliant, I tell you!) This whole watching-live-development-as-it-happens thing about parenthood continues to blow my mind. It is like having my own personal National Geographic network in my own home.

In my best Aussie accent:

"Watch the baybee gurl...baybee gurls are indigenous to these parts. If you take a closah look into the wild habitat that suhrounds hur, you will see hur nahtural capabilities shoining through. Here she comes...up on hur tippies, ready to take a steppy and ohright ohright here we go...yessss! She is up! This baybee is walking! Isn't nature grannnnd!"

Unreal.

I would write more, but my baybee gurl has now discovered her opposable thumbs and is fixin to figure out how to unplug the outlet covers....uhoh....another success.

(We're doomed.)