Cruisin'

Audrey has started cruising.  She pulls herself to a stand along the gate at the top of the 2 steps down to the living room then moves sideways along the gate.  She's still up on her tippy toes and very unsteady.  But she does manage to fall back to a sitting position without any fussing.

It's been amazing watching her trying to learn to walk.  We have for the most part not encouraged her at all.  Sometimes when I'm holding her up, she'll grab my thumbs from under her arms and I'll let her try to walk a little.  But we don't encourage her to stand.  If anything we discourage it!  I'm not ready for her to be running around the house!  But she is so determined.  There is no stopping her.

I can't help but contrast this with Aaron's journey to walking.  At 10 months, he still wasn't crawling.  He was rolling around to get from one place to another and couldn't even sit back up from his tummy.  By a year, he was doing an army crawl, dragging himself along the floor.  By 13 months, we had him in phyical therapy.  We taught him to sit back up from being on his belly.  We taught him to pull to a stand at the coffee table.  We encouraged him to walk with assistance and then on his own.  We pushed him every step of the way.  I remember each time we taught him a new skill, he picked it up fairly easily.  It was like "OK, this is what you want me to do?  I can do that."  He just never thought to do those things on his own. 

I wish sometimes that Audrey didn't think to do all these things on her own!  She'll be walking by the time she is a year old, we have little doubt.  And the other night after the kids were in bed, Thom says to me "She's not going to stay in her bed.  She's just not."  He's right.  She's not going to be as easy as Aaron.  My first thought on the bed issue was that we'll just leave her in her crib as long as possible.  But then I realized she'll be one of those kids that is climbing out of her crib by 18 months.  Oy vey!

We initially thought we wanted a girl first and then a boy, thinking somehow that would be easier, that the girl would be maternal and enjoy the baby.  But I think given their personalities, we had them in the right order.