I was sitting at the carwash during lunch today, waiting for my car, and had fun watching a baby/toddler and his mom. He was obviously only a couple of days into two-leggedness, and he was having a helluva lot of fun pulling himself up and taking a step or two. The expression of delight on his face when he hauled himself up was priceless. I’m childless, so I never got a chance to see much of this important stage first-hand. So please, share your baby walking stories here, if you would.
My daughter walked at around 11 months. One day she was up on her hind legs pushing an overturned pail around the kitchen floor, and she just kind of decided, “Hey, I don’t need this thing anymore.” For a long time, though, when she really wanted to move out, she would drop down into a crawl. She was really fast on four legs.
My son walked for the first time on his first birthday. He must have spent at least an hour shooting between the couch and the edge of a chair in the living room the first day.
Alas for me, my daughter took her first steps at day care. At the time, we were living aboard an old wooden sailboat, so trying to walk there was a REAL challenge, what with the rocking when boats went by. She started walking before her first b-day, but I don’t recall exactly when… I never did the baby book thing.
China bambina just learned how to walk. Well, she’s been taking tentative steps since her first birthday. About two weeks after that, we visited the US and went camping in the Black Hills with a whole slew of relatives. 25 people, 14 kids and 11 adults.
My wife and I stayed in a nearby lodge since China Wife isn’t too into the camping thing and China bambina is just a year old. Anyhoo, China Bambina learned how to stand up on her own at the Sylvan lodge the first night we were there. She hasn’t crawled since.
It was amazing how fast she went from a couple of tentative steps, giggling like a maniac at being able to do so. In fact, at first she giggled so much she would fall over. Within a week, she could walk 50 feet, stop, turn around, squat down, avoid cracks, not trip over the carpet. She’s gone from careening around to being pretty stable.
Cranky Jr rarely crawled and he walked late. He liked to scootch, sitting upright while using his legs to hitch his bottom along. It was funny to watch. He was good at it, quite fast, and always attracted a lot of amused glances.
He didn’t take his first steps until he was 17 months old, which is very much on the later end of normal. I didn’t worry overmuch (knowing that once he started, life would change forever and there was no recapturing the scootching stage). But my sister, mother of two, was visiting one weekend, and she started encouraging him and making a big fuss over him making efforts. Thus, he took his first steps towards her! I get a kick out of that because she lives far away and only gets to see him twice a year.
About two weeks later, I had a little reunion weekend with a bunch of moms from all over the country whom I’d met over the internet when we were all pregnant. We’d corresponded since before our babies were born, sharing births and milestones and worries and joys. All of their babies walked long before Cranky Jr, and we’d heard about it as each of them took those first steps, some of them 9 months earlier! Theirs were running around like maniacs when we all finally met up. Cranky Jr was still tottering. One of the moms later wrote that it was just as exciting to see Cranky Jr take his first steps at 17 months as it was seeing her own daughter walk at a year. That just brought tears to my eyes, I was so touched.
sniffle
Well, you asked.
i was 18 months before i started walking…talking in sentences at 10 months though. my mother reckons i sat on my ass and asked for things because i was too lazy to get up and get them myself. figures.