Best Foot Forward

Sophie can walk; she just doesn't know she can walk.

Let me 'splain:

Of an evening, her mother and I will usually find ourselves sitting on the ground a few feet apart while Sophie holds onto our hands and totters from the one of us to the other in paroxysms of indecision. This so excites her that she starts losing all sense of balance and ends up giggling and gasping on the floor--whereupon we sweep her up for a group hug. It's all very sweet.

There's a small window of opportunity in this process in which Sophie is excited to distraction but not yet so excited that she's in actual danger of falling down. Last night, at just such a moment, she turned, let go of her mother's hand, and tottered 4 or 5 excited-but-consecutive steps before falling into my arms.

So that's it, I'm calling it: first steps as of 11 Feb. 2009.

It may be more accurate to say that she can stumble a bit further before she falls, since there was no way she was going to come to a halt and remain vertical on her own. But whatever. They were steps and they took her where she wanted to go. Right into Daddy's arms.