Speedy Gonzalez....

Neil already beat me to it with his cute video of Isobel walking but I thought I'd fill you in on how it all happened.

As you all know, Bel is teeny tiny and has these ridiculously small feet. She also had the horrible circumstance of being born with a rather special heart. All of these things have been a bit of a hindrance in her being able to get up and walk. She's shown absolutely no interest in learning to walk despite much encouragement from us. She's into her 18th months now and has been happily crawling around at an incredible speed for the last 9 of those months. She has been grabbing onto furniture or people and supporting herself to stagger around a bit but as soon as you try to get her to let go she would just give in and sit down. Seb was up and running at 11 months and as the months were ticking by we were secretly beginning to wonder if she was ever going to get up of the floor. Even yesterday morning someone commented on her furniture surfing and said "She'll be walking in no time!"....."Yeah right!" I thought, "As if."
Well as it turns out I was wrong, and as always, this tiny little girl who looks so baby-like and fragile has proved us wrong and given us another little glimpse at the power of her strength and determination.
Yesterday morning she was sitting on the floor of the den while Neil and I chatted and out of nowhere she tried to stand up. She didn't try to grab anything she just slowly, with a little wobble, rose to her feet. We looked at eachother in disbelief and then both cheered and clapped. She smiled, dropped to her bum and then did it again. This time with a big beaming show-off grin! This little game of sitting and standing continued for a few mintues with lots of cheering and laughing and then we had to go out so we packed up the kids and didn't give it much more thought. We got back home later that afternoon and no sooner than we were inside there was a knock at the door. It was our good friend and realtor Jo. We stood in the doorway and again Neil and I were chatting away while Seb and Bel played around us on the floor. Suddenly Isobel rose to her feet and walked away! Just like that, out of nowhere, having never walked before in her life. I think Jo was a little shocked at first by my sudden outburst of squeeling, shrieking and pointing and then she realized that she had also had the pleasure of watching Isobel's very first steps. Bel managed about four or five steps before falling but she just kept trying and trying and trying until, after about 10 minutes, she nailed it and was able to walk around as if she'd been doing it for weeks. Jo was amazed and said she'd never seen anything like it! The look of sheer determination in her eye was amazing, it was almost like she was so "in the zone" that she didn't even know we were there. Obviously you don't get to witness this sort of thing very often and I can only compare it to when Seb took his first steps but these two experiences, although equally amazing, were very different. Seb stared to pull himself up on the furniture and then took a few steps. Over the course of a several days, he got braver and managed to go further. Isobel just seemed to decide that today was the day and that was it. She woke up a crawler and went to bed a fully accomplished and very steady walker!
Now there's going to be no stopping her! Go Bel Go!

Daddy, trying to catch THE moment on the video camera and below, five minutes after learning to walk, she's already dancing the two step with Sebastian!

Belly, you are amazing!