Worm

Lyla has figured out what a camera is. I mean, look at that picture. Look at yesterday's. Two weeks ago to get smiles like those, I would've had to do a realistic imitation of an aerobic instructor squirrel. Now I just point the camera at her.

Her crawling is hilarious, but I think crawling is the wrong word for it. It's more like inch-worming if you were an inch worm who had suddenly sprouted elbows. Her ample gut still drags across the carpet, so we should put double-sided tape on her shirt and let her delint the room for us.

Lyla has the short-term memory of a gnat, so each time she sees a shiny treasure in front of her, she invents the inch-worm maneuver all over again. You see her concentrating to figure out just how to coordinate everything, and when it works, she looks like Peter Parker did when he discovered he could shoot webs from his wrists. But sometimes she's too tired for it and howls, as if to say "This simply is not possible!" Reminding her she did it an hour ago does no good.

But we are on the precipice of major change: Lyla's contentment with here is about to morph into eagerness to get there.