The Daily Hailey

Now that Waverly’s monthly series is up, and has been for two months now, I realized that I’m probably missing some basic update stuff! Did I tell you guys she’s walking?!?!

She’s only really aced it aced it in the last few days, but she’s been working at it for a while. We are SO proud of her!!

Many of you guys know how it goes. She’s been walking along stuff for a good long time now. Then it became her kind of letting go and taking one step before bouncing back into the couch or whatever she was holding. Then, it was a step or two between pieces of furniture that she knew she could flop onto. The prime spot was the footrest of the recliner to the couch beside it. Was basically 1.5 steps, and she could just flop onto the couch. It was a super safe way for her to practice. She continued at the spot for quite a while, but it became less of a flop and more of simply a place to stop and hold on to.

It wasn’t long after that when she moved to standing up in the middle of the room, all on her own. She and Rowan both did that kind of out of order. None of the whole “crawl to couch, pull up, and walk” business. We’d just find her standing in the middle of a room, all smirky and proud of herself.

Once that skill was mastered, she seemed at a bit of a standstill, hesitant to branch out into further walks. So we pulled a move we used in Radisson. We used to have this big beautiful open rec room in the basement, with furniture along the walls. When our kids started trying to walk, we plunked an ottoman in the middle of the room, and the kids would naturally start walking between the furniture and the ottoman. This time, we moved one of the little child-sized recliners into the middle of the living room. And like we suspected, she started making the 3-4 step trip between. No joke, we only did that for maybe a couple of days. She had it.

We knew she had it had it when she went from the living room window to the middle of the living room, stopped, crouched down to pick up a big toy bus, stood back up unassisted, walked to the further couch, and stopped without falling.

She easily crossed the living room and walks into the kitchen now. She still plunks down lots, but she definitely prefers to walk than crawl. She doesn’t get upset when she falls and she doesn’t falter much when her siblings whip past her at warp speed. She’s strong and confident and just super delightful, as usual.

With walking has come stairs, which she goes up confidently. We obviously never leave her on the stairs on her own, but she has beetled up them time and time again, leaving us running to catch up behind her. She has gone down a couple of stairs seamlessly on her own before, always with us behind her. She’s never fallen down even one stair, so I think she has a good idea of how it goes, but obviously not enough to leave her to it on her own. But she’s brave and independent and will be doing that in no time, I have no doubt.

I’m SO proud of Waverly’s BIG milestone! Excellent job walking, little Miss!