These Boots Were Made for Walkin'

The big news in Avaland is that she took her first steps this past week. It happened on St. Patrick's Day, so we like to think she was celebrating being one-quarter Irish (my grandmother on my Dad's side was off the boat). She has a walker that she has used to walk around the house for a couple months now. When she first started using it, we had to stand closely behind her helping her hold on to it. Then she could maneuver it mostly by herself, only needing help with turning it to navigate corners and doorways. Then she had it down pat and really just needed us to make sure she didn't crash.

Well, on the day in question, Ben challenged her by placing the walker a couple steps away and seeing what she would do. Determined to reach it, she took two steps solo from him to the walker. We then kept challenging her in the same way, cheering her on each time she took a couple steps. She only likes for us to do this a few times before she tires of it, but we've made it part of the daily routine to keep challenging her. Here's a video of her first steps.

Long-Overdue Update

Note to self: Don't start a blog at the same time, literally, that you start a new job. Around Ava's birthday I started teaching an English class online for DeVry University. Having been interested in breaking into online teaching for a while, I was excited about the opportunity. Overall, it was a good experience, and I plan to continue next term in about six weeks. However, learning the material for a new class I'd never taught before on top of learning the online system and policies of a new school, in addition to mountains of grading was overwhelming. Not to mention I kept all my other freelance work, because this was just an eight-week assignment that might not have gone anywhere, so I couldn't afford to quit anything in case it didn't work out.

For several weeks it was all I could do to take care of Ava and juggle all my work, nevermind keep up with this blog. But now the class is over and I have a little breathing room before the next term starts, so let the updating begin.

Ava is now 14 months, and she is talking all the time. Her favorite word is baby, and she loves pointing at pictures of herself and saying "baby!" If she is screaming her head off, show her a picture of herself and she will excitedly exclaim "baby!" and all will be right with the world again. Other words in her lexicon include mommy, daddy/dadda, juice (probably her second favorite word), ball, night-night, hi, bye-bye, uh-oh and no. She also shakes her head yes and no, but I'm not quite sure if she understands what that means. If you tell her to say bye-bye to someone, she usually waves as she says it. Lately it sounds like she is trying to say "snack," a word we use often, so we'll see if that gets officially added to the list.

As Ben's last post announced, last weekend she stood by herself for a long period for the first time. Up until then she would stand briefly for a couple seconds, but now she will stand for longer periods of time with a level of balance she didn't demonstrate before. I feel like she is *this* close to walking.

Ava standing for the first time!!!!!

This weekend Ava stood for the first time on her own for a couple of minutes. Here is video footage of her second successful attempt at standing up!