WALKING! BABY!

We are prepared to call it -- there've been a few incidences of a step, or two, or three -- but yesterday, we both saw her stand up (in the middle of the floor, not pulling up on anything) and take six steps completely on her own! We held our breath the whole time, amazed & not quite believing it -- but she totally did it! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Go baby go! 

It's coinciding with her sleeping a lot and eating more, so we're pretty sure it's a growth spurt and developmental leap. We didn't have the video camera out, but we'll catch her walking soon so you all can see it. Rawk!

In other news: 

--High five! is her new thing. Hold up a hand, say high five, and she'll smack your palm repeatedly (with this huge smile & laugh). It's even funnier than her waving hi and bye-bye, if you can believe that. 

--Growling! She's doing a whole lot of imitative sounds and faces, and growling seems to be her favorite. She sat on my lap for 20 minutes the other day while I was working from home, with just the call-and-response growling (and laughing!) for entertainment. 

--Babysitting! Our friend Arthur from college was in town with his wife, Theresa, who was performing at a club in the Mission on Saturday night, so of course we wanted to go; no family members happen to be staying with us right now, and our friends were all off for a camping weekend (we ... don't camp), so we went out into the wide world of non-friend/non-family babysitting for the first time. I signed up with a website called sittercity.com, which lets you search by location and job type (babysitting, nanny, mother's helper, etc.), and see complete profiles of caregivers -- their experience, certifications (e.g. CPR), preferred ages of children, reviews from other parents, etc. You post a job, and people reply; you can also contact sitters from their profile addresses. We got a couple of good responses, including one from my top choice profile, Talia J., a college student with ten years of experience and lots of great reviews on the site. She was AWESOME -- I had been so nervous, but she just put us completely at ease. Everything went beautifully, we got to see Theresa perform and hang out with her and Arthur afterward -- and Annika never even knew we were gone. Heh.