Little EC has surprised me this week.

I’ve mentioned in the past her pattern for developing new skills: one day, she randomly does something neat, like rolling over, or sitting up for an extended period. Then several weeks pass while she tries to figure out how she did that in the first place, and a month or a month and a half later, she starts to reliably do that thing like she means it.

At the beginning of this week, she sat up by herself for the first time. Starting from her back, she would roll over to her side, toss her legs out in front of her, and push up with the arm that is still on the ground. And presto, she’s up. Seeing that on Saturday, I figured that we’d start seeing it reliably sometime in mid-July.

I’ve been seeing it reliably for days now. She’s figured it out, and when she wants to sit up, she sits up. Sometimes she doesn’t quite make it, sometimes she falls right back over. Sometimes I’m changing her diaper and I do everything I can to keep her down (but that’s when she most reliably succeeds, of course). But she skipped the weeks-long hiatus that’s supposed to happen.

Maybe this is a fluke. Or maybe, she has made great progress in learning how to learn, and has developed greater facility in analyzing her own actions. If that’s the case, then I suspect we could be seeing faster progress in mastering new skills.

Already, she is pushing herself up onto her knees, or moving onto her knees from a sitting position. How much longer could it be before one hand moves in front of the other, and she really gets moving?