Taller

I'm not sure when it happened. One day, she was clawing at the elevator, trying to get to the numbers. The next, she stood (barely on her tip toes) and pressed the one to go down.

She helps me do the laundry by throwing the clothes into it. She gets really upset if she catches me helping her get a heavy piece over. Luckily, she's not so tall that she can see my hand if I keep it inside the machine.

She can open the fridge and thinks that's a necessary prelude to requesting whatever she wants from inside it.

She can get things off the TV if she stands on her tiptoes - remote, cat brush, VCR (yikes!). She doesn't even need the extra step of moving the cushions out of the way anymore.

She struggles much less with the steps to the taller slides at the park. Sometimes she even forgets to crawl up the platform ones and just steps up. Same thing goes for stairs - she takes them one at a time, up or down, with ease. She'll hold my hand, but I think that's just to make me feel better. She prefers to have me walk behind or beside her so she can hold the hannle (handle) and do it herself.

She climbs out of her highchair and can almost get into it. If only there were a bit more lip on the chair...

Anything slightly taller (and there are fewer of these) than her is used to brace herself as she swings from her arms with her legs curled underneath her. She tries to do this if Chrys and I are both holding her hands - we usually don't let her because she doesn't always ask first and it can throw us off balance pretty quickly.

Today, I caught her with a leg thrown over the top of her crib and her chest on the bar. I think she was ready to heave herself over when I told her to get down.

She can reach untold new things on my desk and doesn't have to climb on top of it anymore to get to them.

She easily climbs to the top of the cat tree, even though there's nothing to hold on to save for the edge of the surface. She used to need something taller to get the right leverage.

She confidently climbs on the table to turn the living room lights on and off. Her favorite dismount (from the table or the tree) is to then climb over the arm of the couch and slide down to the cushion.

Did I mention that I'm pretty sure she's part monkey?