Oxymoron Henley: the Scaredy Cat Daredevil

16 Months. That's how old this sweet girl is as of yesterday. At her 15-month check-up, I learned she was supposed to be not just walking, but "Walking well"! Well, she is a chicken and refuses to walk by herself! Still a month later!

The funniest thing is that she has become a PRO at the walker. She obviously is strong enough to walk because she whips this thing around like it's nothing!

And she loves pushing it through her tall Daddy's legs!

The only walking she does is holding our hands. She's gotten good enough to only hold one of our hands at a time:

I love this picture--so sad it's out of focus!

She is taking up to about 4 steps at a time. This started a couple of weekends ago when Aunt Amanda was over at our house trying to get Henley to walk. Amanda has her own reasons for wanting Henley to walk--she's the flower girl in her wedding in May! :) So it was quite appropriate that her first few steps were to her Aunt who wants her to walk more than any of us! I wish I had that on video, but sadly I don't. Here's a video I took last week of a few steps on her own:

Although she is the biggest chicken at walking, she is the biggest daredevil at climbing on everything in sight (hence the title of this post)...

Our playset (I had the swimming pool blocking the steps and she crawled right under it and pushed it off like it was just a game I had set up for her!)

Any chair in sight (this was the only chair in the backyard and she crawled across the yard to get up in it!)

And chairs in front of the computer when she is hinting to me that she wants to watch a show:

Her favorite chair (and my least favorite) to climb in is the kitchen table chairs because she can crawl on top of the table!

The other day I found her hanging off the side of her high chair (even though I had the tray clipped tightly in place!) when I walked away for a second! Whew, so thankful she hasn't gotten hurt yet (say a quick prayer for her and me as I save her life on a daily basis! :) )

In other news, she is still the sweetest thing ever and we can't imagine our life without her. She loves to get completely messy when she eats--particularly spaghetti:

Gavin tries to make her laugh on a nightly basis at dinner:

And she LOVES her Dad:

Any time he walks through the door she fusses until he picks her up:

And her favorite thing to do is read, read, read! I did not stage this pictures--she leaned over the couch and picked all of these books out of a basket and sat in the middle of them and read them one by one!

Hopefully she'll decide one day soon she can walk! We started at Thanksgiving saying, "Well maybe Henley will be walking by Thanksgiving!" and then we said the same thing at Christmas and they have come and gone. Maybe by Valentine's Day! :)