Walking! (Or: The Best Day I Have Had So Far This Year)

 

 

 

It is true, my sweet precious tiny baby girl has joined the land of the Walking Walkers Who Walk.

This makes her no longer my sweet precious tiny baby girl, but instead my sweet precious tiny toddler. Because, lets face it, even with walking she is still sweet and precious and tiny. With an emphasis on tiny. Which makes the walking that much more sweet and precious.

At 3 p.m. this afternoon, with no warning or pretense, Hannah stood up holding on the the T.V. stand, let go of it, and simply walked away. Before this stunning moment, and in fact all morning before this moment, she would only walk if she was securely holding on to either my hand, her highchair, or her pushing car. She loved to push things, including the shopping cart, but as far as independent steps she would only take two or three and those usually were in the context of her falling down. I sort of figured eventually she would just decide to walk, but I guess I was expecting a little more active practice, with more wobbly steps and the falling, leading up to 4 then 5 then 6 steps at a time, you know? Like a normal baby? But she had other plans in mind. And so this afternoon she took off, and did laps around and around and around the house. She started in the livingroom, walking in circles first on the carpet, a bit hesitant to strike out into the great unknown of the wood flooring. After thirty minutes of walking confined to the rug though she felt she had her sea-legs, and off she went.

Her pattern became as follows: Go from Livingroom rug to hallway. Take a Left at Mom's room followed by a Left into Hannah's room. Go to Hannah's chair, lay her head down, throw her hands up and say "WOW!" Or perhaps "Yay!" or sometimes "Good Girl!". Pick her head up. Turn around. Walk out. Take first Right, then second Right. Go back to Livingroom rug and again shout one of the three aforementioned congratulatory proclamations to herself. This goes on for basically the rest of the afternoon until bed time, with very little variation except to occasionally hug one of her brothers or the dog.

And it was truly one of the most wonderful afternoons I have had all year!

In other smaller (but still wonderful) news

I bought some slipcovers online from JCPenny at Christmas time, for the couch and loveseat. I hadn't put them on yet because we did not want Patches to turn them into slipcover shreds. She went yesterday do get declawed and as SOON as we got home I pulled them out and trued to put them on......but they were WAY too small! I called JCPenny but they said since I ordered them over 90 days ago I could not return them. The very nice lady said I could go into a store in person and hope someone took pity on me. So today I did just that. Eden was still home sick so he and Hannah tagged along. When we got to the counter I said "I bought these online. They don't fit." The lady there said "Ok.", took them, typed some numbers in to a computer, and refunded all of my money! She didn't ask for a receipt or ANYTHING. It was so, SO very awesome.

Then, I got a text message on my phone a few days ago saying my account address had been changed and to call Verizon if it was unauthorized. I forgot to call them until today. The very nice Verizon lady told me my address was still the same as I repeated to her, and then she said she noticed I had gone over my minutes last month and wanted to know if I needed to upgrade my plan. I explained to her that my husband was deployed, and we had the misfortune of having our bank information stolen, which lead to his name being involved in this check fraud scam, which lead to many many MANY minutes of me being on hold with the police, FBI, Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Secret Service, FedEx and UPS. I told her I never go over my minutes, it was just obviously a freaky month. She said "Oh, I am so sorry to hear that. You have been a customer of ours for several years, and I am just going to credit that amount back to you, if thats ok?" Heck Yeah! That was nearly $100! Thank you Nice Verizon Lady Dawn!!!

To sum up: This was the best day I have had so far this year. I apologize profusely to March, whom I may have judged prematurely to be in league with January and February. That is clearly not the case. Thank you March for showing your true colors, even if you are nearly half done.