Where in the heck has she been??

...you might be asking yerself if you are one of the 6 people who read my blog. I don't even know the last time I wrote but it's been awhile. We've had a trip to California, in which we became those people - you know the ones whose child is crying during the first 15 minutes of your flight.... We didn't book a seat - midday on a Sunday I thought we'd be safe to get a seat but NO! the flight was full. We had a squirmy, tired 11 mo old on our laps, literally on our laps as she finally fell asleep with her head on my leg and her feet splayed across her dad. It didn't look comfortable but it lasted for the remaining 1 3/4 hours of the flight. I had big wet patches on the leg of my jeans when it was over because we seemingly have the most drooly baby ever. Cute, but drooly. (Having said that, she DOES have 7 teeth where most of her peers have 4 or less) So yeah, that's what I was doing.

Since we returned, we (the girl and I) have had colds (mine's mostly gone but hers is lingering) that laid me out for a few days. Work has been exceptionally busy because my co-worker was on vacation, prompting me to learn what she does in the favored form of trial-by-fire or 'putting Anne in the hot seat'. Although she did *try* to teach me all she could before she went, there was inevitably some things that came up that were 'surprises'. Anyhow, I learned a lot that week and that's good.

The big news is that our little bundle of joy has started taking her first unaided steps (to be honest, she was never really "aided" with stepping because we weren't sure we wanted her to walk any time soon). She actually walked over to her dad to say hi in that photo above. It's absolutely precious because when she starts walking, she gets quite excited and the arms go into 'windmill' action (or wax on/wax off mode) and she sits down. She'd probably get a lot farther if she didn't flap. lol Interestingly, since she started walking, she also started crawling in turbo speed. I was out with a couple moms/babies from my childbirth ed class and E would start crawling away from us and out the door with a speed I hadn't seen previously. I actually think there was smoke behind her when she took off but maybe she farted and was trying to get away! Anyway, I spent a lot of that hour following her our to the sidewalk, or into the kitchen of the cafe, or over to strangers where she'd still down and charm them all. I'd eventually pick her up and bring her back, she would take off again. She had no interest in hanging out with us. So there you go, she's only 11 months old and already I am getting a glimpse of my future with a teenager.