I wish she would walk already...

I know everyone says that you're in big trouble when your baby learns to walk because nothing in the house is safe after that. But seriously, I think we're past that point at the moment, and it would be immensely safer FOR HER if she would just learn to walk already.

Somewhere around five and a half months, Olivia started scooting/army crawling around. She quickly mastered this and then moved on to knee crawling. Then she discovered that, hey, I have a really strong grip, and if I reach up like this and grab onto something high, I can pull myself up to standing.

And she's been crashing into furniture and toys ever since.

It took Olivia exactly one week to master the pulling up technique, to the point that she could bring herself to a weakly-supported standing position with the help of any toy taller than six inches. But she doesn't have a great sense of balance yet, and she's a bit impatient. So she'll be standing up next to the coffee table/exersaucer/shapes barn/toy box and then spot her musical toy/burp rag/ball/pacifier across the room and decides she wants that and will just walk to it. She knows very well that she is capable of crawling to it, and she knows how to "plop" down so she could do so. But she insists on lunging instead. It's as if she knows that she wants to walk and firmly believes that one of these tries will be successful, but she just turns and sort of leans, and down she goes. She hasn't figured out the "balance on one foot while moving the other foot forward" move. I think she really believes that if she leans in the direction of the wanted item, inertia alone will turn her into a walker.

Let's just say that this attitude has led to more than her fair share of bumps in the last couple of weeks. We have to keep our eyes on her CONSTANTLY. And even then she's not really safe from bumps. We want her to learn, so we don't hold her or even try to steady her unless she's in danger of falling, and we aren't always quick enough to prevent that either.

So, walking would be a welcome blessing. We are already at the "nothing is safe from baby" stage, so she might as well walk.

I know. She's seven months. Most babies don't walk at this stage. But she's exceptional, I tell you. She's going to be walking early whether we want it or not.

I have to cut this short. I have a mobile little human terrorizing my office. She was sleeping when I started this post, but then I heard some noise, and went into her room to find this:



And, no, that was not staged. This is really what she was doing. It is how I've found her after both naps today and this morning when she woke up. I'm a little concerned that she's going to actually try to climb out next. Seriously, she's a busy little person on the move.