Step by step

Unfortunately for Elliot, our first-born set the bar pretty high on our expectations of mobility.

Except not really.  We have our brain wrapped well around the fact that all babies are different.  Especially since in most ways possible, our babies are very different.  While it was fun that Kendra advanced so quickly and so early (wounded-soldier crawling at six months, hands-and-knees by nine months and first steps at just ten and a half months and toddling around immediately afterward) and we were delighted to witness it, I hated that when other mothers saw her, they often felt bad or that their baby was "behind".  Now as the same thing has happened with Elliot, I say, "Please, don't feel bad.  Feel sorry for me.  This makes my life so crazy!"  And it does.

While Elliot has been a much more avid crawler than Kendra (he was up on his hands and knees within a couple of weeks of the wounded soldier number), walking is something he's definitely decided to ease into.

He did take his first steps at almost the exact same point in his life as Kendra did, that was all he did for over a month.  Kendra took steps and practically started running.  For over a month all we could get out of Elliot was stuff like this:





And mind you, this is the very best take we got after many, many attempts over the past couple of weeks.  In fact, that was an awful lot of walking for him at this point.  Those baby steps only came with loooooots of coaxing and only a step or two at a time.

Until yesterday.  Literally.

I don't know what clicked, but yesterday he just decided that he was going to start walking for realsies.  And boy has he been strutting his stuff!




It's actually rather a shocker to see him make such a drastic change.  He literally went from those heavily persuaded single steps here and there to just...toddling around everywhere.  I still get a little shocked to watch him do it.  When we went to the library today, it blew my mind to watch him push himself up from where I sat him down on the floor and just waltz over to the train table 10 yards away where his sister was playing.

Crazy!

I guess this is for real--Elliot just isn't our baby anymore.  I guess it's a good thing we've got another one well on the way to help us cope...