Walking

It has been so much fun to watch the personalities of our children emerge from such young ages.

Children with the same parents born into the same home, within a very few years of each other have their own unique ways of doing things from the very beginning.

When Tracey started walking, it was one day before her first birthday, and I had walked across the room, and I turned around to see what she was doing, and she was walking after me.  She didn't do it again for weeks.  The next time, it was the same thing, but she did it in front of Daddy -- just randomly following him as he was walking away.  And again, she did not do it again for weeks.  Her first birthday was the end of January, and she began really consistently walking on her own around St. Patrick's Day.

Howard was a force when he was baby.  He wanted to do anything Tracey could do which included walking as soon as he could without any care about falling over or bumping his body.  He was a little over a year old when he started walking, and once he started, he kept at it with very reckless abandon.

Caroline was the exact opposite of Howard.  She watched him walk for two or three months before she very tentatively gave it a try after hours of walking holding on to Daddy's fingers.

Lee Lee was quicker to stand than any of our others, and so she would stand next to her siblings for pictures or whatever we were doing leading up to her first birthday.  I remember Tracey (who was 4 at the time) loved helping Lee Lee walk around, and Addallee loved this as well.  As a result, when Lee Lee began walking on her own -- she just took off.  She really didn't have any balance issues because of all the time she had already spent standing upright and walking around with big sister Tracey.

Hunter has had his own agenda when it comes to walking.  While he definitely did not want to walk as we came up to his birthday, he also had no interest in being led around while we held his hands.  He could get where he wanted to go by crawling and he had no interest in walking.  Soon after Christmas, however, he started pushing anything he was strong enough to push.  It did not matter if the object was designed to be a pushing/walker toy for a baby, if Hunter could move it, he has been pushing it around our main floor.  This includes but is no limited to potty seats, stools, boxes, adult chairs, child-sized chairs, step-ladders, and laundry baskets.  He still had no interest in holding anyone's hands -- he wanted to walk his own laps pushing his objects.  In addition to his training regimen of pushing, he has also incorporated a step-up training aspect.  He will push our little two-step bathroom stool that the kids use to reach the bathroom sink around the house, then he'll stop, step up one step, put his hands up above his head, stand there long enough to make his mother nervous, and then he will carefully step down, and continue pushing the stool somewhere else before repeating his step-up routine.

Now, I do believe we can officially say Hunter is walking because, just like his pushing exercise routine, he has worked himself up to about 15-20 steps in a row before he will crawl the rest of the way to his destination.  Then, he will stand and go another 15 steps toward his next destination.

I am so humbled that the God of the universe who created every star and moon and planet also uniquely created my wonderful children and has already lay the groundwork for every aspect of each of their personalities.