March 22, 2005

Walking tall

A major milestone this weekend - Dorothy took her first real steps on Sunday!

Dorothy has gotten very good at standing and walking with minimal help - she'll hold your hand, or even just rest her arm against something stable, and she can stand pretty much indefinitely (or until her excitement overwhelms her balance, anyway). But she's been very reluctant to let go of that stabilizing point. She has been standing occasionally without holding on (especially in the bathtub) for a few seconds at a time. Usually it happens when she sees two toys that she wants to pick up at once, and she forgets that she's not holding onto anything. Once she notices that she's standing without support, she sits down and/or grabs something.

We've been trying to encourage her to walk by having one of us help her stand, and then the other holds out his/her hands a couple of feet away and calls her. She's been taking a couple of lurching, falling steps to get to the other person, but nothing remotely stable, until this weekend (although she loves the game, even after giving herself a bloody nose playing it in the doctor's office a few weeks ago). Part of the problem is that she gets so excited that she leans way forward to try to get to the person calling her, and then she's too overbalanced to walk. But this weekend, I got her to stand up while leaning back against my body (not holding my hands), so she wouldn't dive forward as much, and she just toddled right over to Tom, three or four steps. She also will stand up from sitting in her chair and walk a few steps to either of us, and she's starting to be willing to let go of Tom's hands in order to walk to me (although it doesn't seem to work in the other direction if I start by holding her hands, instead of having her lean against me).

It's really fun for us, not least because she is so proud of herself. She giggles and preens and generally makes it clear that she thinks she is just hot stuff. (Of course, she also gets lots of praise from us for her new "trick"!) She also wants to try it over and over, although her balance isn't as good when she's laughing her head off.

We don't have any really good photos or video yet, because she really wants both of us to be playing in order to do it - so there's no one to run the camera. We tried to videotape it this evening, but didn't get really great footage. But I'm sure we'll have lots of opportunities for more.

Posted by Elizabeth Nugent at March 22, 2005 09:43 PM
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