There have been quite a lot of milestones on this vacation of ours. New words and sounds. New eating habits, like weaning and starting to bite big pieces of food. (She’s almost maniacally fond of peanut-butter sandwiches, it turns out.) A few more that I can’t think of just now, because it’s late.

Today we were at Barnes and Noble, and she was pulling books off the shelf and putting them back on. There was one she liked in particular, and she turned and handed it to me. I was pretty far away, so I leaned over to grab it and went back to where I was. Then, she wanted the book back, and since she was already standing up…she took four steps toward me and fell down.

It was too fast…Empirical Mom didn’t have time to get the camera ready, so we didn’t document the occasion. But it’s official: we had first steps!