Let’s Do 52! Brave
Babies are amazing, aren’t they?
They go from being tiny and helpless and relying on you for every single aspect of life to, within about a year, standing up and walking across the room.
I get excited over milestones and I think most if not all parents do. I remember clear as day the days my children rolled for the first time, crawled, said their first words and so on but nothing gets me like those first tentative steps.
Allison took her first steps a few days shy of her 11 month birthday but something about being an early crawler also made her a very competent and fast crawler and who wants to wobble around taking itty bitty steps when you can shoot across the room on all 4s? Well at least that was my logic. So we waited.
And then the day came. Tuesday to be exact. My sweet little tiny (still around 17 pounds) girl took a leap of faith. Carefully, arms outstretched for balance, she rose to her feet without holding on to anything at all, and she walked. But this time it wasn’t as shaky or tentative. No it was confident and with pride! My baby girl is walking!
When I stop to think about what it takes, in a baby’s mind, to decide “I can do this” it amazes me every time. Because here is this tiny little person who must all at once coordinate muscles, balance and sheer nerve together at once to rise up on two feet and walk alone. And as a parent, no, as a human being there’s something truly beautiful about that.
Then there’s Mr. Andrew who never ceases to amaze me with his speed of growth and maturity. It’s a milestone when you get to the point where you don’t have to get in the pool with a child because you know he can swim well enough without you. Of course I was sitting along the edge with my camera in hand testing out various settings and trying to master the art of moving target x setting sun. It was an awkward light situation but he was happy to keep jumping in over and over so I could try to get just the right shot.
These are little things in the scale of life– walking and jumping but when they happen for the first time or even one of the first times they are special. They are leaps of faith, trust, confidence, stubbornness and bravery all rolled into one.