Standing room only

Milestones time: Anya did her first-ever stand-from-sitting today.

She's been standing more and more surely for the past few days, able to support herself without handholds for 10 seconds or so at a time. She's even done the odd little standing dance, shaking her centre of gravity around while staying upright. She's also been falling over, a lot, which has meant a greater-than-usual share of tears. But I suppose the falling is as important, in working out how to stand, as the staying upright.

I didn't see it as I was at work, but Kate says that today she pivoted to kneeling, straightened up, and stood, without holding anything, on her own two feet. I can imagine the half-surprised, half-oblivious smile on her face: she was probably being delighted with the cat, or a toy, or the play of light on the wall, rather than her own achievement. To me, the speed of this change is pretty amazing: a month ago she was barely crawling.

One of the reasons I started writing this blog again was that I was looking back on the first nine months of Anya's life and realised I didn't have much of a record of how she had developed. While in the UK I was shown my own baby book: between covers of light blue sateen-effect vinyl, there was a photo album and space to record the appearance of the first tooth, the first word, the first crawl.

I can see the argument that these things are in some ways meaningless. Surely what matters in life is internal, and largely invisible to outsiders: when was her first feeling of affection, or fear, or amusement? When did she first realise she was a person, distinct from the world around her?

But Kate and I naturally want to remember as much of we can of her life. The milestones will do fine for us.