My first tooth and first step

Diwali week was a hectic week. Not only did S meet both her Ajjas and Ajjis, travel 3 times by plane, light her first sparkler, meet three bow wows and a whole host of sundry cousins and aunties/uncles- she also cut her first tooth and took her first independent steps.

We felt S has been teething for the last 3 months- she was drooling a lot and kept biting stuff. Her gums felt hard and we could see some white beneath. But the actual poking out of the tooth was quite sudden. It was preceded by a whole evening of crying. We were flying from my mom's place to my in-laws place. The last time at the airport (4 days prior) S was a gem- she sat in her pram and played on the flight and went off to sleep after playing and woke up fresh when the flight landed. This time was a nightmare. S started crying half an hour before the flight, refused to drink milk, kept crying on the flight, slept for 10 mins, then again cried after landing, cried all the way o my in-laws place and again till 2 in the night. Luckily next morning she was ok, but I was not sure why she was crying- we had been giving her a lot of adult food in my mom's place since she was refusing to eat her normal food (she also had a cold so my thought was something solid is better than nothing) so maybe she had a stomach ache, also the milk i tried to feed her at the airport was very hot so maybe she burnt her tongue (but this would not lead to her crying at 2 in the night) or maybe her cold was getting worse. Mostly looks like it was teething pains because next day she was fine and pop came out the pearly tooth. Her sweet toothless smile will get filled now so we are busy taking lots of snaps of the toothless smile while it is there!

At her Ajji's (my mom) place S took her first independent step without holding anything. We have a large living room cum dining room with a low centre table in the middle of the living room so S had a lot of space to crawl and explore. She loved going round and round the centre table and occasionally would meander off to a nearby sofa. I missed her first step :-( but it was on one of these movements from the centre table to the sofa that she let go of the centre table and walked towards the sofa. In her other Ajji's (hubby's mom) place S took her first two independent steps. The date was October 31st and the time was 10:30 p.m. (there recorded !!) and I was there to enjoy it. The hubby placed S in the middle of the room and called her towards him. S took two steps and reached him. We all applauded and Ajji made special sweet to celebrate the next day.
Now S is very good at walking , literally running holding onto the sofa/walls. I hold one of her hands and take her walking around the room. She is still hesitant to take steps on her own and prefers to crawl. But since she gets upto so much mischief (already broken two showpieces) with crawling that I am quite ok to wait for her to master walking.