In Her Own Time

Caitlin's personality has really began to bloom in the last week and it has been such a delight to clearly see her grow and change. She's blabbering on (in her own language) a good majority of the time and it's especially precious to overhear her playing and somehow narrating/conversing as she does. Just a couple nights ago in the middle of dinner she--out of the blue--said pointedly, "Nanananananownownownow....no!" to which she paired the head shake, which she had been doing for some time. So now she's figured that out, although thankfully it's not yet been directed at us parentes...I wonder how long that will last!

She randomly said, "Bye-bye" as she crawled away from me the other day, and as soon as she turned around I got a huge, "Hiiiiiiii!" She'll "repeat" (again, mostly in her own language--which actually reminds me of the early stages of learning German when nothing I said sounded remotely like it was supposed to no matter how hard I tried!) anything we ask her to say, she starts her own games of peek-a-boo by covering her face and then giggling hysterically until someone notices her and plays along, she absolutely loves being chased by Papa or anyone who starts by saying, "I'm gonna get youuuuuu!", and her favorite song is now "Itsy Bitsy Spider" which she also initiates by saying, "Dowwwwww!"' and moving her arms up and down like the rain (second stanza of the song). What are you going to surprise us with next, little girl?

And then there's the issue of walking, which has never been of huge concern (she was a late crawler too and it was so nice to be able to communicate boundaries to a 13 month old who understood what no meant!), but I remember six months ago thinking how obvious it would be that she would walk by my sister's wedding at the end of September because what flowergirl doesn't walk down the aisle?! Well ours didn't. In fact she was so crabby that day we were just lucky enough to have her sit quietly in the auditorium for the ceremony! By then she could have held two of the junior bridesmaids' hands and walked between them, but her stubborn mind was made up that she would NOT do it on her own! We'd ask her if she wanted to walk and just get the clear head shake in return. She wasn't going to do it until she was ready to!

And yesterday she was ready! She's been practicing standing up in the middle of the floor for three weeks now, but would always just plop back down and crawl to her destination after she got her fill of ooohs and aaahs from us. A few days ago she'd started taking two and three steps in a row but easily lose her interest when she'd fall to the floor, still resisting our encouragements with the clear head shake. But yesterday! No more head shakes and no more frustrated grunts if she fell, she would just get right back up and keep going! At 18 and a half months, Caitlin finally decided she wanted to be a walker!

As far as her stubborn streak goes though...let's just say I'm overjoyed when I think about how *fun* it's going to be as she gets older and it only becomes an increasing factor....!!