Walking!

As with so many of Anya's key developmental stages, I'm not sure exactly when the breakthrough came on the walking front. Go back three weeks, and she had never taken a standing step unsupported. About two weeks ago, she managed her first tentative shuffles, and showed off a few in time for her first birthday. But this was only walking in the sense that sliding down a snowy hillside on a baking tray is a bit like Olympic luge.

Over the past few weeks the toddles have been getting longer and more confident. Today she reached some sort of a tipping point: for the first time, she seems to be getting around more on two limbs than four. She'll follow you around the house at a fair clip, stand and dance, and even make her way up and down slopes with only the slightest slip-ups. She's a bipedal baby! Or I should say: a two-footed toddler, a baby no more.

Simultaneously, she appears to have given up knee-crawling; preferring a crab-like style of skittering about on hands and toes, on the occasions when she does crawl. Lots of babies--I think my brother Robs was an example--only ever crawl like that. She seems to think that the old knee-crawl is beneath her now, and wants something a bit closer to vertical.