Earlier in the month I wrote about “training wheels” and reflected on the many smaller steps it takes to get to the large ones. The “milestone moments” we record in photographs, videos, journals (or blogs!) of our children’s accomplishments are often not as exact as we’d like to imagine them. The baby doesn’t just one day begin speaking in full sentences. Asking a question like “when did I start talking” of your parents is a difficult question to answer. Often the answer comes in years: “When you were two.” But what does that mean? It’s kind of vague, isn’t it? There are 365 days of life during the age of two and I can say with relative certainty that none of us simply started speaking on any one of those days. It is a process. Despite my pre-parenthood thinking that children just “started speaking” I’m now realizing as an adult that most things are a process. Before speaking (our son still only really says “mama” with confidence … “dada” is coming) there is a long process of what we think of as babbling. There is a testing of sounds before confidently choosing a specific combination of sounds to form a word. This, however, is far from being an intelligible sentence. The same is true with walking.
Our son has been walking around furniture for a couple of months and while we were back home for a wedding my mother noticed this and, with the blessing of the parents (my wife and I), purchased a wagon-thing for our son to advance in his walking skills. This wagon allowed our son to basically push something (like a shopping cart) forward. He was no longer relegated to testing his legs on immobile furniture but instead was able to stretch his legs by making visible forward progress. The wagon doesn’t turn but he can be set facing one direction and move himself (by walking) all the way until he hits a wall. This “small step” gives him great joy. There is a large smile on his face every time he takes a step.