walking, talking, and blowing kisses—what a big girl!

It's been way too long since I posted, so even though I should be getting busy epoxying the laundry room floor (yay!), I'm taking a few minutes to write about my baby. I mean, toddler. She really is a big girl now, and it's becoming more and more obvious every day.

First, she's walking. Not all the time, mind you, but she walks a lot more (at home) than she crawls. The funny thing is she takes very careful, very deliberate individual steps and looks proud of herself the entire way. She started doing this Friday, April 2, when she took 12-15 steps at a time across the family room and made several trips. I've included a short video here, although that number of steps wasn't captured on video. (This is the salvagable portion of the video—my husband cut her head off in most of it! Never give the camera to him again, methinks.) She still prefers a finger to hold onto, but when she's playing by herself she likes to walk around carrying things. I'm sure the slow pace will pick up soon and then I'll be running to catch up with her, but it's so cute to see her wobble back and forth to try to maintain her balance at every step!

Bridget's also talking a lot more. She says Papa (she calls Steve that since she hears her cousins calling him that), but also says it when she's looking at pictures of my dad. He hasn't heard her say it yet, though! She says doggie, night-night, all gone, and a few other things that I can't quite figure out (but she sure thinks they're words!).

My favorite thing, though, is the way she kisses us. Her cousins Ella and Lily taught her how to blow kisses right around dad's birthday—the first time I saw her do it was on March 27. She puts her hand to her mouth and very dramatically pulls it away and says, "Mmmmuahhh!" But she also started kissing us, both when we ask her to and when we're not expecting it. Up until the last couple of days, they were always the big, open-mouthed kisses of babies when she'd lean in to our lips or cheeks and say, "Mmmuah!" over and over again—just the kind Aunt Carolyn likes (wink, wink). (They're not super wet, slobbery kisses, though—what a relief!) She's even kissed Mya (our dog) like that. But the last couple of days I've noticed that she's started putting her lips together sometimes at the beginning of a kiss. Already moving to the real kiss stage! I love being a mom.