In the past three weeks, since about the time that little EC took her first steps, I’ve been progressively beginning to delegate tasks to her that I used to do myself. To wit:

• I’ve started giving her large foods and letting her break or bite them into pieces herself. Apples, bananas, bread, cucumbers, peppers…she’s gotten the hang of a lot of different kinds of food. I’m later at doing this than many parents around me, partly because most other parents have more than one child and therefore they already have on their hands two things that I didn’t: experience, and messes. Now, I’m gaining both!
• I’m letting her make the decisions about where she wants to go. I’ve stopped doing quite as much encouraging to play with this or that toy, or go here or there, but instead just kind of watch where she goes and what she does. Again, I now have more experience and more messes.

Little EC has also started to “talk” much more, with a collection of words of which she’s particularly fond: “Mama”, “Dada”, “Light” (pronounced “ite-ah”), and much more trying on new words when prompted. She also makes sounds for tigers, elephants, cows, pigs, and chickens. She does sign language for “more” reliably, and “please” much less reliably. And finally, she just makes a LOT. MORE. NOISE. than she used to.

After a brief (two-week) stint of jet lag and some kind of (undiagnosed) illness after we got back from vacation, she’s back to a regular and normal sleep schedule again.

And, of course, there’s the walking. For the longest time after those first steps, she showed no inclination at all to repeat them. Two weeks ago, she started trying here and there, mostly failing after a step or two. By one week ago, she was trying in earnest and could get out four or five steps before falling. And as of today, she can walk back and forth across our living room carrying bottles of water, and not fall over if she’s concentrating hard enough. She usually does fall, though, because she’s always unstable and usually easily distracted.