Watch out folks - we've got a walker!

Well, sort of. She took her first steps on January 4th but didn't try again until Saturday January 28th - a day before her 1st birthday. For all of January she would run around holding one of our fingers (usually mine!) and was pretty decent at walking - still looked a little like an Irishman at 3 in the morning if you know what I mean but she was generally staying upright.

The weekend of her birthday she would repeatedly try to take some steps ranging from 3 steps to 10 before stopping or falling down. All week we encouraged her to try again on her own after walking around with us for a while but she usually threw a fit when we made her let go of our fingers. One night after Stroller Strides, when we let the kids out so they can play for a little bit, she was having a b-l-a-s-t chasing after Cooper, while still holding on to me. They would run/speed walk after one another and when they caught each other they would both squeal with delight. Seriously cute! Cooper however is 18 months old so it's a little unfair to Kayla but she was certainly trying. Anyway, this weekend we've had another break through - multiple times she willingly let go of us or the furniture to walk around. She's still at only about 10-15 steps at a time and sometimes only about 3 again but we're making progress. She can turn corners even - I think she just needs to build up some strength and some confidence then she'll be off and running (literally).

She's gotten pretty good at standing on her own now and bending down to pick up objects. She likes to lead with her left foot when she's walking so (just like our old dog Spade used to do) she walks a little sideways - in a straight line but her body's at and angle. But she looks so proud and eager that it doesn't really matter - she's trying and she's happy about it and so are we!

Unfortunately, at this point we have no video or pictures of her walking to prove this, but you'll just have to trust me. Soon enough she'll be running and I won't be able to get the pictures anymore so I'll try to get some this week. Amazingly enough we didn't take a single picture of her this week. Last week was pretty slow to but we were able to make up for it at her birthday. Since she takes up so much more attention now it's a little harder to have the camera trained on her but I don't like that we're not documenting some of this stuff so I'll see if I can figure out a way to make it work. Hopefully I'll post something this week!

Happy walking!