These boots were made for walkin'

The past 48 hours have been absolutely magical! (Yeah, 'bout time I blogged about something other than Big Decision 2011.) Talk about rapid changes! K took her first steps on Mother's Day (May 8th), about three shaky steps into my outstretched arms. She's been cruising along the furniture since I-don't-know-when, and she's continued to do so. She'd take more steps towards me if I encouraged her to, but she was still pretty comfortable cruising around, holding onto something at all times. She loooooves her push toy that she pushes around all over the place. She got up to seven steps towards me about a week, week and a half ago, which was great. Little did I know her confidence would soar a mere week later!

A few days ago she started really working hard at standing up from all fours in the middle of the room, without anything to hold onto, and she's gotten so good at that! Her first attempts reminded me so strongly of a gymnast trying to stick the landing after a vault: knees bent, arms outstretched, trying so hard to balance without toppling over. And she's mostly conquered it! She still topples over now and then as she's trying so hard to stand up, but once she figured out how to stand up in the middle of the room, the logical next step (no pun intended) was to take steps forward without anything near her to hold onto! What really helped, much to my surprise, was taking out my large exercise ball, purportedly to start doing situps every night (yeah, riiiight). But she loves that ball, and she would pull herself up on it, push it away from her, and stand, balanced, with nowhere else to go but take steps towards the ball. That really seemed to be the turning point for her.

Over the last 48 hours she's been walking everywhere, toddling around like a drunk sailor. Still falling over, but she pops right back up again, ready to try again. Talk about teaching me some serious life lessons! No matter how many times you fall down, you just gotta get right back up again and give it another shot. The pride on her face and her ear-to-ear grin as she walks across the room warm my heart like nothing else. And she just goes as far as her little legs will carry her until she falls down, then she pops right back up again. Talk about magical days! I think school ended just in time, because I wouldn't have wanted to miss this for anything. The next week should be even more fun, as her confidence grows and she gets better and better at this walking gig. Now my job is to try to capture it on video and in photos. Thank goodness I found the charger for my camera's battery, which I'd been looking for for a while now. I will definitely post pictures as soon as I get a few good ones. (I'm not thrilled with the layout of the header for this blog, since my current favorite picture isn't oriented well for it. But we were on our way to the pool for the first time this season, and she just looked so cute sitting there! So much more a little girl rather than a baby.) This summer is off to an exciting start!!