The first few months of The Caterpillar's life, she was basically just a blob.

Then she graduated into an impatient, screaming blob.

Lately, however, she's become almost a little person.

The last two weeks, she has ramrodded through developmental milestones like Muck the Bulldozer. It never ceases to amaze me how children learn and develop... sometimes they'll just go along being their same old selves and then all of the sudden, it's like a wall was knocked down and they casually stroll through it, all the while looking at you like, "What?" For example, just two weeks ago, self-feeding with The Caterpillar was like watching a monkey with his hand caught in a trap.

And this is her today:
(Impatient too.)

Here's a list of other things The Caterpillar is doing today that she didn't do two weeks ago:
  • Sitting independently for extended periods of time without falling on her face
  • Getting from her belly or back to a sitting position
  • Getting from sitting position to crawling position
  • Crawling to get a toy (or some other unsafe item that has been forgotten on the floor)
  • Crawling into another room to find me
  • Pulling herself up to a standing position
  • Cruising the furniture
  • Pulling down chairs onto herself
  • Splashing water in the bathtub
  • Laughing at The Dormouse's antics

She's gotten a lot more adept in all the other stuff she'd been doing all along and I've had up the monitoring a notch as well. No longer can you leave the baby on the floor for a minute or two and come back to find it in the same place. The other day, The KingofHearts was home alone with her and went to the bathroom only to come back to find no baby. He looked in the kitchen. No baby. He looked down the stairwell. No baby (whew! - and yes, there's now a baby gate there). Just before assuming she had learned how to unlock the door and hail a cab, he heard a noise. She had crawled behind the rocking chair and was lying on her back, grinning up at him - amused that she had just Punk'd Daddy.

She's faster than me too. The other day at the office she ate most of a Post-it note before I could even get it out of her hands. And I saw her pick it up. And I was holding her at the time.

I fear for my future.