speed racer

Methinks my daughter has propellers on her rear end, because MERCY! has that child gotten fast!!

She started toddling at 13 months, took off with I-Mean-Business-Walking at 14 months, and now, at 16 months, is simply a 2.5 foot tall blur with curly hair, zipping around my house.

We try to eat dinner at the same time we feed Hazel - not always possible, but it makes for a much better eating-environment, but she often finishes up first and wants to get down. So we clean her up, set her chubby little feets on the floor and say "Mama and Daddy are still eating dinner, so can you go into the living room and play for a bit?"

And she nods her strawberry blond head and meanders to the living room to remove every single toy from its place and put it somewhere more interesting - like in our shoes, in between couch cushions, and down the basement stairs.

Last night followed much the same pattern - although as Mark and I finished up, we realized that her little voice (because she chatters NONSTOP while she plays) didn't sound like it was coming from the right-next-door living room. And sure enough, her little head poked out at us through the railing at the top of the stairs (we have a split level house - it's only ever 7 stairs at a time, so it's not a HUGE climb)... she had climbed the stairs, raced down the hall to her bedroom, pulled her beloved blanky from her crib and was bringing it back downstairs to play.

We chuckled about how fast and sneaky she is, secretly thanking God that while we didn't know she was up there she did not decide to pull anything heavy onto her head, or flush anything down the toilet, or shut her fingers in a door.

She did the same stinking thing to me this morning. What am I doing that I have no idea my child has ventured to another FLOOR of the house??

And last week, she managed to climb to the tippy-top of Aunt Martha's half-spiral staircase before anyone realized where she had snuck off to (and this one was probably 15 or more stairs, and if you know spirals, you know that the steps don't always have the most surface area for unsteady toddler feet...) Mark said his body temperature jumped about 15 degrees when he saw her at the top of the stairs. Nothing like inst-sweat to make you feel like a top-notch parent.

But really - I just adore watching her zoom around on her own, exploring and playing and imagining things in her little mind. Even though my ever-increasing waddle isn't the most convenient when it comes to chasing her around the house - I am simply enthralled watching this little gal grow up right before my eyes.

What a thrill. A chatty, blurry, chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed thrill.