And, she's off!

You know how I said I had so much to talk about that I thought I would forget some of it before I had a chance to write it down? I used a pen and wrote notes on my wrist a few nights ago, and I've been washing the ideas off as I go. THAT'S how lame I am.

I've been saving up the best news for last, partly because I was waiting for the video to go live, and partly because I wanted to do a really good job on the post and I feel like I haven't been writing well since we got back. But I've got to get it over with before Jason's smartypants recently graduated sister comes to visit this weekend, so here goes nothing.

While we were up in Cleveland over Memorial Day weekend, Liza was very interested in showing off her newfound ability to sit up. We progressed rapidly from "sitting up from lying on her back" to "sitting up from lying on her tummy," which is a couple months' of development in about two days. She was also showing off her "vaulting" skills, where she would go up on her hands and one knee from a sitting position to reach something in front of her. You can see an example of that here:

As you can tell from the following photo, Penelope was not too happy about Liza playing with her egg toy. For a 10-month-old, she's pretty strong (I guess that's what happens when you have two older brothers)!

Anyway, Penelope and Liza were both doing a lot of vaulting, and in a lot of cases Penelope was actually looking more stable than Liza was. She's starting to pull up, too, and while Liza is cruising faster than she used to a week ago, I was still starting to get a little depressed. Here's a kid who's 10 weeks younger than mine, and she's not only beating up my child, but she'll probably walk before her, too. Boo hoo.

But Liza came through for us on Sunday, when she decided that Alexander's precious Batman puzzle was just too tempting, and if we weren't going to move it close enough for her to eat it, she'd just have to go get it. That's right - LIZA CRAWLED! Here she is, later that day:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5613112511178845077

(sorry, Luddites, no love for you this time. Just look at the shot above and pretend she's inching forward in a painful-looking fashion)

At first Liza would crawl only when coaxed, so we spent large portions of Monday setting up just out of reach things that were choking hazards, spilling hazards, or otherwise off limits to her. Alexander and William weren't so sure about using their new toys as crawling bait, until I pointed out to them that now they can tell everyone they helped Liza learn to crawl. Nothing like meaningless bragging rights to calm down the whining. Liza would crawl a foot or two, grab the toy, then sit back on her butt. We managed to get her to crawl 10 or 15 feet, but only in 3-foot-long increments.

When we got home on Monday I microwaved myself some pizza, and as a joke I told Liza (who was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor) that if she wanted it for dinner, she could have it, but she had to come get it. I put the plate on the floor, and Liza took off like a shot .... well, more like molasses in January, but she crawled the whole way to the plate, about 8 or 10 feet, without stopping along the way. And yes, I let her eat the pizza for dinner.

Since then she's started crawling on her own to get toys and to explore. She's still slow enough that I can put her in a relatively empty location, walk out of the room, and come back to find her not far from where she started, but I can see that's going to end really soon. Yesterday I put her in the middle of the kitchen floor, went to the bathroom (just down the hall - I'm not stupid!) and when I came back she had crawled over to the bench where we store our "backyard" shoes, and she was banging my garden clogs together. The bag of hideously carcinogenic choking hazards (easy-light charcoal) was sitting a foot away, and has since been moved to the basement. And later that day I left the living room for a minute, and when I came back she had pulled all of her Baby Einstein videos off of the shelf where they're stored and thrown all of her Kix cereal all over the rug. My little girl is getting all grown up!

So since Tuesday I've been hurriedly installing more child-proofing measures. If I see another of those stupid door latches again I may have to hit someone .... but thankfully I'm about done with the areas that absolutely have to be secured. I've got a few more tall cabinets to screw to the wall, some more latches to install in rooms that we don't use that much (because I don't want the baby playing with the serving dishes in the bottom of my china cabinet, for example), and I've got to find a place for Jason to keep all of the hazardous bathroom stuff where it won't be accessible to toddlers, but other than that I'm about done.

Part of the reason I haven't written about this until today is that I've been trying to figure out how I feel about it. Part of me wants to put an announcement in the paper: "MY CHILD IS SO FREAKIN' BRILLIANT THAT SHE MANAGED TO START TO CRAWL AFTER ONLY TWO OR THREE THERAPY SESSIONS" Part of me is mourning the last shreds of my independence that are flying out the window ... no more sneaking down the hall to the bathroom, and I'm going to have to get really good at getting the toilet lock open in a hurry. Part of me is celebrating the fact that Liza can now show initiative - yesterday when she got tired of playing one game with me, she started to whine, then you could actually see her realize, "Dude, I don't have to stay here and play this dumb game anymore," and she crawled off and found a different toy to play with.

That, more than anything, made me all teary-eyed, because it's one of the first signs I've had that she's not a baby anymore. She's an increasingly independent toddler, who has specific wishes and can act on them even when she can't say what they are. The days when I got to call all of the shots are gone - she's started being picky about meals, and she's decided that it's more fun to look at her board books herself rather than listen to me read them for the 100th time. Next thing I know she'll be getting things pierced and dating some redneck from a tobacco farm.