skillz

Viola's First Steps

We shot this footage November 11. Sorry for the delay!

Month 11

Month 11 is upon us, and the mad skills just keep coming. Viola took her first unaided steps on November 11th, and she can now walk successfully for 5 feet or so.* Last night she even launched herself toward the crib from a standing position at a wall. Once she learns to stand up from a sitting position on her own, we're done for.

Here she is standing all by herself in the yard this weekend. She keeps herself balanced like a tightrope walker, with lots of arm movement.

The next skills we hope she develops are sleeping skills. Specifically, going-to-sleep skills, and staying-asleep skills. And ability-to-sleep-away-from-a-warm-lap skills. Any of these would be an improvement.

We closed out the month with a fun Thanksgiving celebration. Viola met her second cousins from Montana and kept them on their toes.

*(Some video of the first steps is forthcoming. That's Joe's assignment.)

Taking bets on when she's able to text.

"Uh, Papa, this phone is so old and slow. How am I supposed to text using this prehistoric device."

"Will you buy me the newest one, it has GPS, it's 3G and like 300 times more memory."

"So you can have even more pictures of me."

Walker Walking

On her 9-month birthday, Viola learned a new trick -- walking behind this little cart borrowed from her friend Sascha.

Viola's sounds

Joe's parents gave us a fancy video camera for Christmas. It later got stolen and then replaced by our insurance company. We've been using it to take a ton of video but haven't been sharing much of it with the outside world. Viola now has a few proto-words in her repertoire, so it seems an appropriate time to demonstrate them with video.

Exhibit A: "dada" (note that Joe goes by "papa," so she is probably referring to the cultural movement of the early 20th century)

Exhibit B: "mama" (note that she said this one first and that I go by "mama")

Exhibit C: "bbbbrrrrr" She has been saying this one for months, but only when she's dissatisfied. This usually has the effect of making us laugh at her when she's mad, which only makes her madder. This clip has a happy ending, though.

Waving

Today is the day that Viola said to herself, I am going to get serious about waving. She waved at grandma and her toys when Joe dropped her off this morning, and she was still waving at her toy pelican this evening when I got home. Pretty cute!