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Ila stood on her own! She loves to toddle around clutching tightly to two hands or the furniture - she prefers hands as her exploration is not restricted to furnitured areas. Today, I let go of her hands for a moment - she can lean back on my legs - and she just kept standing there! No swaying, no reaching for anything. Just standing! Then, twice after this, she chose to take her hands off her balancing object - a chair and a table. She had this thrilled, sort of shocked look on her face with just a dash of fear, exciting fear, mind you. Wow! I can sort of glimpse her walking in my imagination. I know she'll walk on a purely theoretical level, but today it seemed like a real possibility!

What a day! It has been a very sweet day (among other things, Ila took a freakisly long nap). This morning she started rustling around and obviously wanted to nurse at about 6 o'clock. I got us all snuggled up and positioned...and Ila proceeded to latch on and nurse for about 20 seconds, then pulled off and put her pacifier in her mouth for about 5 seconds, then back to the breast for 20 seconds, then back to the pacifier...back and forth for about 10 minutes. She did this all in a closed-eye, semi-conscious daze, like she was getting stoned off all the snuggle-y, sucking action. I, however, was wide awake after 30 rounds of this and decided to plop her pacifier in and pull her up onto my chest. She settled into a light sleep for another half an hour, sprawled across my body. It was so absolutely lovely and blissful that I didn't even mind how much I really wanted to still be sleeping.

Later, after the standing action, I put Ila down for her second nap. Today is my brother's birthday, and I was thinking about him as she fell asleep. I have a lot of guilt about not being a kind big sister when we were growing up. Sometimes I think this has something to do with my parents; sometimes it seems like it's just about me. Specifically, I always wonder how I could have been a better sister - maybe it's something my mother did, or something my father didn't do, or something flawed about me that made me stingy and ungenerous with my brother. But, I am always looking back thinking my sibling behavior was problematic and wondering how it went wrong. I think about this because, if Ila has a sibling, I'd like the two of them to love each other without these feelings of guilt.

Well, it just occurred to me today - after three decades as a sister - that maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. Maybe nobody did anything wrong, maybe I was a pretty normal big sister, but there is something in me that always wants to rake myself over the coals for past behavior and choices. It's such a revolution to think that, in fact, this isn't about who I was as a kid but about who I am today: I am someone who wants to fix things, even long ago things that were (and still are) totally out of my control, someone with a strong tendency to be a bit too critical of myself. Also, a bit of a rigid perfectionist. Now, instead of thinking about ways I can make Ila a perfect older sibling (it has now become clear that was what I was doing), I will focus on trying to help her be kind to herself. Maybe then she will be okay with who she is, what she needs, and we may just foster a love of her own little self that can overflow into kindness and compassion for any other little beings she shares a home with. There's a thought.