It’s the moment every parent dreads. You put your baby in her cot, flat on her back and half-asleep. You wander to the bathroom to cut the tag off her new gro-bag. And when you return you see your not-quite-eight-months baby doing this:

Yup, she can stand. By herself. With no help from daddy anymore. Who needs you? Not me!

So in the morning you put her on her little pink scooter-car thing, and she not only shuffles around the floor like an infant Lewis Hamilton, she’s cocky about it:

It’s made mealtimes rather interesting, because along with this latest development comes a desire for independence stronger than some separatist movements. She doesn’t want me to hold her beaker anymore – she wants to do it herself. And if I try to help her, I get screamed at. Damn it, dad, I don’t care how much water I pour over myself, just let me do it my way!

Every achievement on the way to full mobility is written large upon her face. She grins from ear to ear, laughs uproariously, and babbles excitedly at how freaking cool she is.

But her ego has outgrown her ability.

She’s increasingly annoyed at how slow crawling is. You can see (and hear) her frustration that she can’t move as quick and easy as she wants. She keeps getting up on one knee and lifting both hands skywards as though asking to be picked up – but woe betide if you try, because she’s actually raising her arms in victory that she’s one step closer to walking and doesn’t appreciate you stepping on her freedom, thank you very much.

Her ‘victory hands’ are actually a little counter-productive to the whole standing project – she gets to her hands and feet like a cat arching its back, makes a triumphant one-armed salute, and face plants right into the carpet. But that doesn’t faze her at all, because she starts right up again.

And all of this while teething and fighting off an ear-infection. Determined is not the word: she’s a little trooper!

And yet, along with the pride, comes a tightening of the chest and a catching of the breath, because my baby is on the verge of becoming a toddler. I thought we’d have more time with our baby, that it’d be at least a year before she gave up her total dependence on us. I want to tell her to slow down, to stop being in such a rush, that it’ll come regardless, but she’s inherited my willfulness – I was the same as a baby, racing towards developmental milestones as though they came with prizes. I already feel like I’m being pushed aside, and I can’t say I altogether like it.

But then, when I think how far we’ve come since those first days of life in June, when I worried she wouldn’t be coming out of hospital, to how she is now, I have nothing to complain about. She’s a bona fide miracle.

If her journey to independence continues at this rate, before I know it she’ll be trying on funky hats and telling me in a Mockney accent that she wants to be a chimneysweep’s scamp. I dread that day.