When we arrived today, Aitugan was still asleep in her crib and so we were able to go in and watch her sleep for a minute before she was woken by her caregivers. Unfortunately we had dropped our camera bag off in the playroom prior to coming to get her such that we were not able to get a photo of it.

We noticed last week that the side rails of her crib had been raised to their highest setting as our little angel now stands every chance she gets. It was about a week ago that she first started showing signs of figuring out the footing required to move from kneeling to standing, though initially she needed to grasp something like a finger and get a little pull up.

Over the next several days, she got better and better to the point where last saturday she crawled up behind a parent and grabbed hold of the back of her knee and pulled herself to a stand unassisted.

We have since seen her do it so many times and on so many surfaces that it hardly seems worth noting except to say that she can do it at will. She no longer needs her hands to pull, though depends on then for balance such as when she crawls to the mirror and stands up.

The next transition will be for her to gain the ability to maintain a stand without leaning forward. At this point, once she starts going backwards, she's like a tree crashing to the forest floor. We recognize that this is a dangerous stage and that it requires constant vigilance, for she is likely to climb to a stand at any moment

I have already begun to mentally walk through our house in Maine imagining all the things now within her reach and wondering where we will put it all when we get home. Hopefully we still have some of the boxes around from the move such that - just as one would do in anticipation of a flood - we can just repack the lower three feet of the house. Hurricane Aitugan!



Aitugan is also becoming quite vocal and her favorite sentence so far is Da da da, uh da da da, uh da da da. It is really cute and she just keeps going with the same pattern again and again. It seems to have no meaning at this point, but she seems to like the way it sounds and enjoys making her mouth move in exaggerated ways while saying it. First words may not be far off. Dada perhaps?




As the photos show, we are still a ways away from seeing her hair lay down.