Walking

Brooke has officially started to take steps on her own.  She still can't stand up or turn without holding on. So, she waits for someone to pick her up onto her feet and then starts to walk like a drunken Frankenstein's monster.  One arm up in a V, other arm straight out to the side, legs far apart, and a huge smile on her face. She takes a few steps and then falls down laughing.  She is so proud of her new trick.  At the playground she is Evel Knievel.  She has no regard for where I am and hitch crawls all over the place.  She enjoys crawling up stairs and hurling herself face first down the slides.  She has just started to hold the railings to practice walking up and down the stairs.  She has obviously not read the childhood development books where walking up and especially down stairs comes after learning to walk alone on flat earth.  I also got a flashback of stories my mother told me about my youth when Brooke crawled up a few stairs and then stood up, turned around, and started to just walk right off the top step.  I was across the room and had to sprint to catch her before she went down hard onto her head.  I guess the curse worked mom, thanks.

Charlotte is doing very well now that her parents are behaving better.  We had gotten into a bad habit of pushing off bedtime and sitting with her to watch about 20 to 30 minutes of t.v. each night before bed.  She was having a harder and harder time behaviorally during the day and when we could not figure out what was wrong with her, we started looking at what was wrong with us.  Turns out we are lazy and it was affecting her.  So now, her parents are doing a better job of keeping on a *gasp* schedule at night and getting Charli her dinner, bath (sometimes), pajamas, teeth brushed, and to sleep by 7:30 on a good night and by 8:00 on a not so good night.  Life is better, more structured and a little rushed, but better.  She is such a good girl, she makes us proud every day.  She shows so much self-awareness and restraint at times it is amazing.  Without our input, she has said "no thank-you" to helping our upstairs neighbor walk her dogs when we were eating dinner and when we were on a video call with her grandparents, she also turned down a candy cane when she had already had a small one that day.  Every once in a while she makes us feel that we are doing an alright job by her.  I am sure her therapist will someday relieve us of that delusion, but for now...