Our Independent Little Girl

Hallie has been getting quite a bit of an independent streak. Lately, she's been demanding to see Karina A LOT. If we are outside and pass by Karina's house (which, effectively, we do every time we enter or exit since we share a stoop with Mark, Vanessa, and Karina), Hallie will call out and/or stare wistfully at Karina's door. And if she senses that Karina is home or that it's time to go for a visit---the girls often see each other for at least a couple of hours on most nights---she'll get up and go to the door and asked to be let out:





It's very cute in a mildly pathetic way.

Hallie has also taken to throwing mild (relatively---I suspect that they can get worse) tantrums or bursting into tears when something is upsetting to her (like being deprived of eating carpet fuzz). She switches moods very quickly from happy/busy to utterly inconsolable. Here's a small piece of evidence of this from tonight. In the first picture, she is happily reading the new book that Aunt Ney and Aunt Kim got her (it's a Halloween touch and feel book and it's quite excellent---thank you Aunties!---but we need to trim Hallie's nails or we will go insane from the sound of her scratching the scratchy pirate beard):



A moment later, we have an academy award winning melodramatic moment:


But the biggest evidence of impending independence is the following:

Today, Jenny, Hallie's speech therapist, and I had Hallie take a collective total of 4 steps between the two of us this afternoon. Jenny figured that, since Amy, Hallie's OT, got to hear Hallie's first babble, it was only fair that Jenny would get to experience Hallie's first steps. It's funny: Hallie is now really quite well balanced and has even mostly relinquished her odd crawl/scoot (on one knee crawling, and on one leg pulling herself along). Her trunk control must be a lot better (needless to say, it's all the practical application of string theory around here). Anyway, the biggest impediment to Hallie's walking is Hallie's psyche. To paraphrase FDR, she really does have nothing to fear but fear itself. We might have a lot to fear once Hallie is up and running, but that's another story.

We obviously did not get the 'walking' on video but we did finally manage to get a video of Hallie 'walking' (with support) and 'talking' (well, babbling) during one of her attempts to be let out to see Karina. Enjoy!