One Small Step for Creeping Kid

Kiernan took his first official steps yesterday, Sunday, October 16, 2005, at about 6:00pm.

He has been cruising around the house quite comfortably for some time now. He pulls himself up on furniture and walks around holding onto it, or pulls himself up on us, grabs one of our hands, and leads us around the house. Or simply in circles. He likes walking in circles. Once he started doing this the general assumption was that he would start walking on his own shortly thereafter. He wasn't in a rush, however, and was content to maintain that level of mobility for awhile.

On Saturday I was following him as he crawled around the house and I looked away for a couple of seconds. I think this was the end of the USC/Notre Dame game. When I looked back, Kiernan was standing there playing with a cat toy. That's no big deal as he stands up all time--and Cali, our cat, has never said anything about the toy--except this time it occurred to me that there was nothing around him he could have used to help him stand. He had risen to his feet totally on his own.

By Sunday he was starting to rotate his standing postition without holding onto anything. When Wendy got home, late in the afternoon, I told her I had a feeling that today, Sunday, would be the day. We went inside to play with him, trying to get him to walk from one of us to the other. He's never gone for this. He gets too excited and his momentum gets the best of him and just drives him into the floor, or collapses him into our arms. So we kept playing. At one point he needed to get around Wendy, and that's when he did it, took his first steps. He wobbled around her, only falling down when he couldn't negotiate a maneuver around Ernie (a stuffed gift from NaNa that plays "Splish Splash" on a plastic electric guitar).

Later on, when Wendy was on the phone describing this to somebody, he did it again, this time in a straight line on the tile floor of the kitchen. He made it a few steps, then went down. I was there to catch him.

Sunday night is bath night. As I got the bath ready I called my dad to tell him the news of the walking. As I did this, Kiernan picked up the empty toilet roll holder (it's kind of like a decorative paper towel holder that sits on the bathroom floor) and proceeded to lead his mother on a march around the house. He was holding onto her with one hand, and holding the toilet roll holder with the other hand, brandishing it like he was a drum major and she was his marching band. He spent a good solid twenty minutes just walking his mother from room to room like this, nonstop.

As we got him ready for bed, Wendy looked about ready to collapse. She'd just gotten home from a tough week on the road, and we'd worked most of the weekend, and now she'd gone on a pre-bathtime forced march. I looked at her sprawled on the floor and thought of the coming day, Monday, which is one of my long days with Kiernan (and her long day away from him). I said, "I don't want hear it. What you just went through for twenty minutes, that's going to be my day tomorrow."

We both laughed, happy that our son is doing so well, and not a little nervous as, yet again, he's about to raise the bar.

Oh well, I can use the exercise.