It’s been three days since little EC turned 10 months, and four days since I first noticed her stand up on her own by propping herself up on something. She prefers low boxes that she can put her hands down on from a crouching position, instead of railings or other things that she would have to reach up for and pull. She braces her hands, pulls one foot up, and then pushes with hands and foot until the other foot gets up. At that point she’s doing a plank, and she usually will walk that in until she’s almost standing upright.

Just today, she started taking my offered hand (holding only my thumb; I guess she wants something she can grip completely) and letting go of her box. Then she’s standing straight up, with only my hand keeping her balanced; and she’ll do this until she realizes she doesn’t know how to get down. Then she’ll go back to the box or perhaps I’ll let her drop backward slowly so she gets the idea. All in all, she has great fun with that.

She’s also now quite adept at putting things away if asked. We started with blocks, but we’ve moved on to stuffed animals, other toys, and just today, successfully, books. She can actually re-file a book in its shelf; and if she’s lucky, it’ll be somewhat correctly oriented. Also, she’s decided to start taking the books out one at a time, rather than just pulling them all out. And when she wants it read, she turns and hands it to me.

We’ve also just started enjoying a game where we sit on opposite sides of a little foam arch that’s in our clubhouse. We can see each other both under the arch and over the arch. Then we get a ball or some other toy, and she passes it to me under the arch, and I put it on top of the arch for her to grab, and then we continue this for as long as she thinks it’s fun, which can be quite some time.

The number of things that she’s getting a handle on all at once is pretty amazing.