This week in review...

So the big news at the Schneider house is that Josie is now 13 months old, has "gone mobile" and is therefore officially a toddler (didn't we just have a newborn?!). I thought it would be fun to show her progression over the last week. So, here is how it all began. Last weekend she started taking short bursts of steps after pulling up, but with little confidence.

As the week progressed, she took steps for greater and greater distances, but usually only if she had a "catcher" at the end and if she started from one of us or holding on to something. Then, midweek, she just randomly started trying to stand up on her own. (She could stand unsupported before, but only if she was already standing and holding on to something and let go.) I thought this was so cute that she was this persistent. She literally did this for about 30 minutes until she was out of breath and had it mastered. Here are some of her early attempts to stand up from a sitting position and start walking on her own.

Last night was definitely the night she mastered walking. We had a really fun night. We watched the movie "Across the Universe" (all Beatles music) and had a blast watching Josie dance and clap every time a song came on and practice walking around the room during the boring parts. And that brings us to this afternoon. In just one week she has gone for trying to walk to full-on walking! Now, she walks on her own when she's trying to get somewhere (like in the video below) instead of before when she only walked if encouraged. Look at her go!

Here are some other photos from this past week. (This is a good time to apologize for not posting sooner this week, but Carissa was sick so I didn't have a babysitter Thursday or Friday. And no babysitter means that any downtime goes to work and not the blog.) Anyway, back to this past week. As you know from past videos, Josephine loves shoes. Here she is wearing her daddy's work shoes. Too cute! (I should mention she went over and did this herself. We just took the photo.)Since I had some extra free time with Josie this week, we walked down to the awesome park at Sawyer Point. Here is Josie crossing a little bridge at the playground. It was a weird moment for me, because I had this big flashback to crossing the little bridge in the Brownie ceremony when I was little and a big flashforward to Josie doing the same thing one day (should she so choose.)We had a great time at the park - and the big metal tube slide made a perfect drum!Here is Josie playing the big chimes - And peeking out around the corner of the playhouse (this picture cracks me up). Looking back, we had a lot of quality "park time" this past week. Lou's annual lawfirm picnic was yesterday. It was so strange to think back to last year's picnic. Josie was only about 6 weeks old and this year she was busy walking around and socializing with everyone. Here she is with Louie and one of the big flowers from the gardening basket we won as a doorprize. She carried this flower around for about an hour (almost as cute as that frozen bag of peas months ago).
Here is Josie's awesome tshirt that all the kids at the firm got airbrushed for them. (Lou and I were disappointed that we couldn't get one made for ourselves with a Carri + Lou and a big unicorn.)Here's just another random photo from the week - Josie and I reading some books before bedtime. And that brings us to today - lots of loose ends to tie up around the house & the Bengals game. We started the day with high hopes for our Bengals and suited Josie up in her new Bengals gear courtesy of "Grandma Who-Dey". But, by half time we were looking for other entertainment (darn Bengals), luckily Josie was in the mood to entertain us.

Here she is taking some of her favorite toys for a ride on her "clacky gators". As I'm typing this, she has just piled another set of toys on top of it to take them on a ride, too. So cute!