Somehow neither of us has reported perhaps the biggest milestone Christina’s crossed yet. As of Friday, Dec. 28, she’s crawling. She’s known all the moves for a week or two, but just couldn’t seem to put them all together. And then she did. No more belly flops, unless she wants to or is just too excited. Very proud of her, of course, but if we thought we had to keep the floor clean before. . . .

What has us watching her even more closely, though, is her desire to stand up. She’s been pulling herself up for two or three weeks, but her current strength combined with her new ability to get to places other than where we set her down has combined to make for some full days.

And just today she’s begun putting some definite vowel sounds with her consonants, and clearly saying “da-da” and “ma-ma” in specific reference to me and Carole. Whenever she’s looking around for Carole, she gets into a “ma-ma” loop, and tonight, when a picture of me and her popped up on the computer, she said “da-da.” She’s been pretty clearly waving hi and bye to people (while saying “ba”) for a couple of weeks as well.

Also tonight she played what to me is the first true game with us. She’s appeared to play hide-and-go-seek a few times before, but it came off to me as mostly incidental, just enjoying moving something up and down. But tonight, she grabbed one of my shirts and was quite clearly hiding behind it and then dropping it down for Carole (and then me and Carole) to see. She’d raise it, drop it, and look for a reaction from us. It was tremendously cute.