Lily gets her walking papers

F you, winter.

(apologies for the low brow humor. It just felt right.)

How very fitting that today - shortly before I took these pictures of our tulips and other intrepid plants pushing up through the earth - Lily managed to stagger her way through her very first steps. Our little girl.

It was astounding, bordering on what I perceive to be something as ludicrously impossible. It shouldn't be a gargantuan thing, if you think about it; billions of people walk every day with little or no encouragement from us. Yet, the mind-bending shock still exists, because someone I've gotten to know very well over the past 13 months just did something she's never, ever been able to do. It's almost the same as if Jen were to walk across the street to the basketball courts, dunk a ball, then start taunting me in fluent mandarin Chinese.

Succinctly put, we were in awe.

It all happened before dinner, when I put her between Jen and myself on the floor, stood her up, and pointed her towards Mommy. She took maybe a step, nothing worth counting, before she wobbled (became longitudinally unstable is the accurate, aviation term for it) and Jen grabbed her. She spun her around and sent her back, and on this second trip she was visibly much more comfortable with the notion. When Jen let go, she swayed for a second, then took one, then two, then three steps to me when I grabbed her up. And just like that, quite suddenly and with no notice, an era had ended for her. Three steps. I turned her back towards Jen, and she crumpled to the floor, convinced she was done for the day. It was a short but decisive victory. Go team.

I've been privvy to the, "Oh, once they're walking, you're in for it" advice many times, but I just don't get it. Lily can crawl almost as fast I can drive, pull herself up into many dangerous and awkward situations, and find danger in the most benign household accessories (she hooked her pants on a door frame today and was bawling because she couldn't move. A door frame, for god's sake). How this will all become a more dangerous venture now that she will be able to balance herself while not touching anything - such as the dining room table, where she's stretching to get a steak knife we've left too close to the edge - is beyond me. Won't walking be easier? At least when she's walking, she's not trying to climb into the computer armoire and chew on the wiring. This should all be a blessing.

So go, Lily. Walk. Out in the open, away from the cutlery. And practice your mandarin while you're out there.

Day fifty two.

Sedums dipping a toe in the pool.

The cat has been underrepresented here, hasn't he? Here is Guinness. Not pictured: his enormous ponch that swings hypnotizingly to and fro while he walks

I'm a fan of this one, even though I almost deleted it. In this photo you can see: our kitchen, Jen, Lily, Olly, me, the camera, our backyard, the houses behind our house, our dining room, our front porch (kinda), through the front yard to the church across the street. It's rather complex when you think about it.