Swing, Baby!

Yesterday, my friend Andrea was visiting. It's great to catch up with her and her adventures in Antarctica and Australia. She's a world traveler and still has the bug to do more.

As we were small chatting in the kitchen, I heard Morgan yelling from outside: "Mom! I'm doing it! I'm pumping! I'm pumping!" I looked out the kitchen window to find my daughter swinging high and low on her playset. Wow. She finally got it.

For the past week or more, she's been watching her neighbor swing herself on playsets by pumping her feet. I've been drilling "feet out, feet in, feet out, feet in" into her head, but she didn't seem to get it.

But yesterday something aligned in the universe and caused her to want to do it all by herself. It might have been my preoccupation with our guest and my unavailability to be with her. It could have been her stubborn streak. But for whatever reason, she did it.

I watched her as she leaned back and let the wind catch her hair. She got the hang of it quickly. She went pretty high for a first-timer. I was immensely proud. We even had her call her Daddy at work to tell him the good news. She told him that she could swing all by herself now. But what I heard her say was, "Hi, Dad, I'm nearly completely independent. Can I have the car keys for tonight?"

The way I felt about this accomplishment of hers was similar to her first steps: I had been trying and encouraging her to take them for some time and then *wham* --she was a walker. And then I didn't want her to walk so much. I wanted her to cuddle with me and be immobile.

This morning my proud little daughter got dressed and, as I arrived in the kitchen, was donning a spring fleece so she could go outside and "practice". The buttons on her coat were not aligned correctly and the collar was half in/half out. But the earnest look on her face told me that I was not going to get in the way of progress. Out she went.

She took 2 steps outside, realized that the 80 degree day we had yesterday had melted into a 41 degree morning. She ran back inside and dressed in her winter garb and just as quickly went back outside. Her face was somewhat frozen, but nothing was going to stop her from her new trick.

Don't grow up too fast, baby girl.