Zoralee's month (three short videos at the end)

This month that Zoralee and I have been in Anchorage, she has grown right on up. Most notably and excitably, she began walking! Now, a couple weeks into it, she rarely crawls anymore. I'll hear her coming into the room and I'll watch the doorway, and it is startling just how tiny of a person comes in! She's like 1/6 the height of the walls. Tiny as a bug.

Here's the day she started walking on her own. We were at Scott and Amanda's house pretty late one evening, and without any encouragement, she just started walking. She carried Gauge's mardi gras beads around, shaking them, dropping them, and being distracted enough with them to not worry about falling.

Around that same time, she sprouted a top tooth, then a couple days later, the second top tooth. Now she's got four, and she immediately figured out she can grind them together and drive Mama to jump from the Cliffs of Insanity. I don't have any good shots of that yet. Either the teeth or me jumping.

But here she is with a still-favorite activity, looking out the window.

Sometimes it pours, in the not so fun way. While she was teething, Zoralee was sick with a bad cold, and to top things off, she fell against the kitchen table leg and ended up with a perfectly straight scratch from mid-forehead to lips. This is a couple days later, after the wound has healed, but you can still make it out.

This doesn't show the scrape, but is this the cutest dress? Thrift store. $1.99. I can finally put her in dresses, now that she can walk! She could be in them when she was lying or rolling. But the minute she started scooting and crawling, they'd bunch up beneath her. I guess that's something to consider when giving dresses as gifts to babies. Then again, there's no telling when a baby will do what.

VIDEOS:

1. Zoralee is becoming a real chatter-er too now, although not so much to other people. Just to herself or her imaginary friends. Here she is on the bed, arguing or giving a speech or ??

2. singing a duet (not sure why the ghostly hue)

3. simply walking