In October 2017, Aaron and I confidently said, “oh Rylie will definitely be walking by her 1st birthday!” When that came and went, we said, “oh she’ll definitely be walking by Thanksgiving.” That came and went. Then Christmas. Then we decided our goal was that she’d be walking before Emmaline arrived in early April. Surely she’d be walking by then. She was eagerly cruising on furniture, using her walker, and did great when she was holding our hand, but she seemed completely uninterested in doing it on her own.
We started making jokes about her walking, like “Mommy can’t carry you much longer, so you better start walking.” & “maybe we need to make a playlist of songs that involve walking to motivate her. We can include ‘I Would Walk 500 Miles’ by The Proclaimers + ‘A Thousand Miles’ by Vanessa Carlton. Basically any song about walking.” Hahaha 😛
She had her 15 month doctor appointment on Friday, February 9th and when they heard she wasn’t walking yet, they told us that they were going to give her a 3 month grace period, but if she wasn’t walking by her 18 month appointment, they would talk to us about starting physical therapy. We weren’t concerned because we had confidence that Rylie would catch on before then, but we did decide we needed to make more of an effort to work with her. So every day we’d hold her hand and walk with her and practice standing by herself. We praised her often and let her take her time. She did a great job, and Aaron said he thought she’d be doing it all by herself within the week if we kept working with her like this.
After dinner on Wednesday, February 14th, we went down to the living room and “worked on walking,” just like we had been every other day. I stood her up a couple feet away from me, sat back and held out my hands asking her to walk to me. Unlike previous times, she didn’t giggle and fall back on her bottom with a loud “plop!” but she took a step forward. And then another step. “AARON!!!!” I yelled even though he was right next to me. “I see!!!” he replied. Then a third step. And then a fourth before falling into my arms. I freaked out and immediately embraced her in a hug and praised her for doing such a good job. Aaron patted her back while saying “YEAH BABY GIRL!!!!” and got up to get a camera to video tape.
“Alright,” Aaron said as we finished watching the video, “let’s try to go for distance!” and the following minutes were spent spreading ourselves out and having her walk back and forth between us
When Rylie decided she was done, she informed us by crawling to her toys and playing. When we grabbed her to try to walk some more, she showed absolutely no interest in standing again (I’m sure in her eyes she had just walked a marathon haha). Aaron and I just sat there watching her, our faces beaming. “Ugg, I am so proud of her! Like, my heart is so full!” I said placing my hand on my chest. “I know! Me too.” Aaron responded. “I feel like I just accomplished something huge even though I didn’t do a thing.”
So our girl is walking and we are so proud of her! We’re still working on it (of course) but practice makes perfect and we are excited for this new season of “chasing her around” 😉