Just when we thought Amber would move right past crawling to walking - she knew how to crawl but just didn't seem to like it very much, and seemed quite intent on standing upright - she realized its utility and has been crawling all over, exploring and investigating everything. She still likes to stand up, but she'd rather hold on to something, and she's pretty quick to go with what she can do well, sitting and crawling. We only have two stairs in this house, from the laundry room down to the den, and she finds them quite fascinating. She crawls there often, and then puts herself in a sitting position and then scoots forward so she can put her feet down on the next step. But from there, she doesn't quite have it figured out. She tries to put her hands down, but that doesn't feel right. One of us is usually right there, so she will try to grab something and stand up on the next step, then sit down on it. Sometimes she manages to get down by herself, sometimes she topples over and I have to catch her.

Just a couple days ago I took a huge fall with her in the den, I was just carrying her along and tripped on a cord and fell headlong. I held on to her and we went down together, but she didn't like it a bit. I didn't either, but she cried more.

I found something else that just terrifies her: pop-out CD drives. One of the places she often monkeys around is right by my bank of computers, most of which have CD drives. A couple times I've hit the button so the tray pops out, and she goes into a panic, just inconsolable. The first one we found was the sound of packing tape being pulled off the spool, that frightened her terribly but I think she's over it. Showing some curiosity about the CD drives as well, though I haven't popped them out on her in a while, it's just too traumatic. She has started up the Roomba a few times accidentally, and it really startled her and she crawled away as fast as she could, and usually I was there to pick her right up, but she keeps coming back and messing with those buttons.

She still doesn't go to sleep well. Fights it all the way to the end, especially if she can't be carried and bounced and cuddled to sleep. Vera has been working on getting her to sleep alone in her bed, but there's always a lot of crying involved.

She doesn't really talk yet, but she's getting close. She says "ma-ma-ma" sometimes when she's upset, and she babbles a lot, almost constantly, though often with her mouth closed. A few times she has repeated something like "dog" or "da" (daddy) but not consistently. We postulate that maybe she's talking, we just don't understand her language. She picks some words and says them a lot; she said "Baden Baden" for a few days, and lately it's been a lot of "Ga-hink".

Yesterday she played peek-a-boo with me; I was playing with her, holding a blanket up in front of my face, and she took the blanket and started doing the same.