New Developments

I'm not sure I understood pre-fatherhood the joy and healthy pride that would come with watching our children do something one day that hadn't been achieved the day before. Jensen learns to write a new letter of the alphabet each week at school and probably has nicer penmanship than I do! Jacob has gone from scoring one basket all of last season to hitting a couple jumpers each week.

For the past 30-45 days, ever since Janie Grace began sitting upright with real confidence we've wondered how long it would be until she'd go from being on her belly to the upright sitting position without our help (she certainly didn't need our assistance falling over from the sitting position before scooting along to her destination!). For several weeks, she's been able to get her legs in front of her, but has been unable to push off of her right arm to get completely upright. We've commented dozens of times, "she's so close." If our collective will could manufacture physical strength, she'd have been getting upright on her own weeks ago!

On Saturday, we were with some friends and Janie army-crawled out of sight and into the next room (as is par-for-the-course these days). When I went to grab her, not sure what she was getting herself into in an unfamiliar home to her, for the first time, she was sitting up staring at me like "Dad, where have you been?". Here we'd been watching for weeks and when we least expected it, she did it! She went on to do it several more times Saturday, and didn't forget how to do it overnight as she performed her new trick several times on Sunday. As she did it each time, we'd cheer and congratulate her and then she'd smile and clap along with us! It almost seemed as if she was proud of herself! We were! Each time she did it, it would force us to do a double-take as we weren't yet accustom to all of a sudden having her staring up at us like that. It's another step of indepedence which only means she's getting older!