Finally!

I need to confess…I’ve been really stressed lately. Not about anything work related, but about Ella. What exactly? I have been totally stressed out about the fact that at 16 months and 2 weeks she isn’t yet walking! I have talked to countless parents about it and they all say the same thing “It’s totally normal for a kid not to walk until 18 months.” That's easy to say when your kid walked by 10 months, but if your kid was 16 months and 2 weeks and not walking, I guarantee you’d be stressed too! The doctor said it was perfectly normal and that she wasn’t worried at all. I talked to parents in my EB group and most of their kids didn’t walk until later, so they said not to worry. I even took it upon myself to call early intervention services (Ella has never needed therapy of any kind but I was convinced that she needed it now). They told me that they typically don’t offer services until a kid is over 18 months old and not walking. I even had people tell me that I only “thought” I wanted Ella to walk, but once she started I’d wish she was crawling again. No…I really do want her to walk. Forget the fact that Ella’s vocabulary consists of over 60 words and the average for kids her age is less than 20 (according to Baby Center it’s around 10). Forget the fact that she has been saying 2 word sentences for months. Forget the fact that she knows all of her animals and the sounds that they make, and that she is a musical genius and sings along with me. Forget the fact that she’s the cutest 16 month and 2 week old EVER!!! Forget all of that…I want her to walk!

Last Friday I convinced Early Intervention services that because of her physical situation they really needed to see her before 18 months, so they agreed and we have an appointment on Friday. I was telling a couple of friends about it at church on Sunday and they both agreed that she’d start walking this week just to prove me wrong…and she did. Monday morning she woke up around 6 am (thank you Daylight Savings) so my wonderful husband let me sleep while he took Ella downstairs to play. When I woke up he told me that she had taken her first steps. Since then she has been taking more and more steps every day. She’s still a big chicken when it comes to venturing too far outside of her comfort zone, but at least she’s taking steps. I guess that means I need to call Early Intervention and cancel our appointment.