Mr. Hankey's home

Our little gal is now walking. And it is totally awesome, but it brings a host of problems with it. First and foremost, she is basically a ninja. Turn your head and she's gone....and made no sound leaving. When she was crawling, her hands would make a noise as she put them on the floor. No more, folks.

Case in point.

A few mornings ago, Lindsay and I were sleeping in bed (our bed, not hers). I was awake and decided to get up and leave her there. I turned on the monitor and in my best dork impression, hooked it to my pants like those folks that hook their cell phones to their belts. I put some laundry in the washer, did the dishes and made some coffee. While waiting for the coffee to finish, I go to the bathroom to find Lindsay in there. Total ninja move because the monitor didn't go off at all!

Now if that were conclusion to the story, I wouldn't have told it. Any guesses as to what she was doing in the bathroom?

If you guessed unrolling the toilet paper roll, you'd be partially right.

If you guessed taking that toilet paper and dunking it in the toilet water, you'd again be partially right.

If you guessed taking that toilet paper out of the toilet and sucking the water out of it, well, then you'd have hit the nail on the head.

That's right. Our cute little girl likes drinking toilet water as much as our dog, Kip. Only in our house. At least it had been cleaned the day before, I guess.

And if you are wondering why there is no photographic proof, well, I guess she found one of my boundaries of where I stop the action before taking a picture.

Monkey business

As exciting as all these stages are, the more mobile our little punkers gets, the more terrifying she becomes. Earlier this month, Lindsay figured out how to get onto the couch without our assistance...which isn't that great because I can't count the number of times she has already fallen off the couch. And those were with our supervision. Great supervision, I know.

But now, she can do it on her own. She pushes her little toybox over to the couch, then pushes her little music table over next to it. From there, she crawls into the toybox...

...and then crawls on top of the music table.

After that it is a small hop up to the couch.

What you see above is actually our ottoman. But from there she can crawl onto the couch and as of today, crawl onto the coffee table. No lie, two times today, when either Kevin or I was in the bathroom, we came out to her sitting on the coffee table. Which means she got into the toybox, onto the music table, onto the ottoman, crawled across the couch, over the arm of the couch and onto the coffee table. When Kevin came out of the bathroom, he found her dunking her hand in his coffee.

Awesome.

Thankfully it wasn't hot anymore and there weren't any burns.

Now that our little girl is on the verge of walking, I will never again think an infant is difficult. Mobility is awesome to watch, but basically a nightmare. If nothing else, however, we've determined she should be quite the problem-solver and puzzle-solver.

It probably wouldn't be so bad if once she was on top of higher ground, she sat and played. Instead, she continues to be a dare-devil once on top of the couch or table or TV stand.

Just yesterday we watched her crawled up to the couch and then stand up tall on top of it. I'm sure that is safe.

I wish I could say this is the worst of her climbing and daredevil behavior. I'd be lying if I told you that. We are clearly awesome parents.