What We've Been Waiting For

Yesterday afternoon, I was playing in the living room and Emmett stood up, took three steps, and then plopped down. He's been standing on his own for limited amounts of time for a little over a week now, and he's occasionally taken a lurching test step here or there, but this was the first time I'd seen him take multiple steps. Of course, he didn't do it again and for all I know, it could be days before he does it again. However, I started thinking about how parents really need to savor these and other milestones. Soon enough, the kid will be doing stuff like this constantly and you'll start taking these newfound abilities for granted.

When I talk to other parents about Starting to Walk, people tend to go on about how "now your life will really get complicated!" and I'm sure that that's true. It certainly was the case with crawling and other movement-related milestones. At the same time, I do get a little tired of the "parenting is a hassle" approach to baby-related conversations. I'm sure that I do it, too, without even noticing it, and I bet that a lot of parents don't mean to make it sound like they think parenting is one hassle after another. I've been trying to watch myself to avoid this, though.

The big thing for me about walking is that with all of the time that Emmett is spending upright, it seems that it's something HE really wants to accomplish, and while I don't want to rush him into anything, I know that one of my jobs is to help him have a sense of efficacy.