Steps toward stepping

My sweet little Pebbles is so funny. She can furniture cruise, let go while standing still, and has repeatedly risen from sitting without assistance but she refuses to walk. She'll do everything but walk. She can crawl a million miles an hour loudly and can sort of do a ghost-like sweep across the wood floor to quickly and quietly get to whatever we've left out that she isn't supposed to have, including an open door to the outside world. She can say mom, dada, an approximation of Tag's real name, "beep", "yah" for yes, shake her head yes and no, and imitate a variety of vocal tones and effects. All in all, she's a great communicator. She picks up games really quickly as well. Man started a new one where he holds out his finger to which she applies the tip of her nose. He says "beep!" and then they repeat. Before I knew about this game she randomly reached over to my face, poked my nose and said "beep!" I just about fell off of the couch.

We spent the day out today. The pest control guys didn't come over until almost 12:15 so things are barely starting to come back together. It was fun just to take the kids out and wander around for a while. It was also lovely to have a good reason to completely declutter my major hotspots. Well, except for the desk. I think it's in its very nature to draw clutter. We took all of our little rugs out, I handed the kids a stick, and told them to beat the rugs. They didn't believe me at first but then had a great time getting the rugs very clean.