She wows me again. Samantha drank from her sippy cup by herself tonight. She's not steady yet, and I had to help her with most of it, but she did do a fair bit of it by herself too. Every day there is a little bit less food dropped down the side of the high chair too. Her fingers and eyes are getting more coordinated.

She also decided to climb the main stair case too. I was sitting on the stairs looking at a catalog, and I feel her crawl past me. Then there are little feet kicking my back as she crawls up the next few stairs. I am in front of her so she can't fall down. The little mountain goat climbed almost all the way to the second floor. She stopped just three stairs shy of the top. Whee! I am so proud of her, but it also scares me.

We were in the kitchen and she keeps grabbing onto my pants leg and standing up. I am concerned about her falling backward, so I grab hold of her and step forward to turn around and pick her up. She steps right with me. I hold her arms and she keeps walking. It looks pretty natural to me. She is just 9 months old! A friend of ours just told us what happened to his family of early walkers: they spent a lot of time in the emergency room. Do friends intend to scare new parents witless, like maybe they get to meet afterwards and go "chuckle, did you see the look on her face when I mentioned ?" Anyway, she is getting the walking part down pretty well.