In His Sister's Footsteps

Well, it didn't take Michael long to see that unless he stepped it up (literally), Emily would leave him in the dust. He has been walking holding our hands for about a week now, but today took his first solo steps. I can see he is going to soon pass Emily. Even though she has been walking solo longer, she really hasn't made great strides (again, literally). She still takes only 6 steps or so before reverting back to her faster mode of locomotion: crawling. But the improvement in Michael from this morning to tonight was amazing. He will be totally independent by the end of the week...just my prediction. For me, the walking is a welcome relief. The "sitting up and playing in one place" stage was nice, but crawling is a whole different game. They enjoy it, but I always felt I had to be on the lookout for the tiniest piece of whatever that would find it's way into their mouths. And in a house that is home to Polly Pocket , this happened almost daily. Even though Polly has been banished to Sophie's room for some time now, she always seems to leave behind a purse or shoe downstairs. I guess when you come with a billion accessories, it is hard to keep track of them all.

On that note, I did manage to purge 4 boxes of toys ( empty diaper cases, they hold a lot!) from our house this weekend. I told Sophie that in order for Santa to bring her new things for Christmas, we needed to decide what to donate. After some discussion about what donate meant and the idea that there were children who didn't have any toys at all, she really got into it. Even though she was willing, I still did some of the purging after her bedtime. Sometimes I feel the slightest twinge of guilt, but I have to say, never once have I been asked where an item is. Lucky for me "out of sight, out of mind" still applies to 5 year olds.