We Have a Walker!

It's finally happened: my little baby has started walking. I've never been prouder of my baby--now a toddler, I suppose--but I've noticed that walking brings with it some side effects I wasn't prepared for:

• Have hands, will carry. Now that baby's hands are no longer required for movement, they are free to pick up and transport everything in sight--remote controls, cell phones, rocks, three-day-old crumbs of food on the floor. This "stuff relocation program" is certain to be an adjustment. But I'm sure I'll eventually see the wisdom of storing the TV remote in the Tupperware cabinet.
  
• Falls. Yes, I read the books warning me of this phenomenon and, yes, I saw other people's toddlers become intimate friends with the floor. But watching baby's repeated spills is tough on my motherly heart. And yet there is no shortage of things to trip baby up: feet, toys, pots, pans, gravity, a cool breeze. But each time, she gets back up, eager to try again. No adult I know has such resilience. Or so much padding.
  
• My shadow: Now that baby can walk, she can follow Mommy around the apartment with ease...into the bedroom when Mommy is dressing, into the bathroom when Mommy is brushing her teeth, into the office when Mommy checks the computer. It's like having a two-foot bodyguard. A bodyguard in a onesie...I've never felt safer!
  

And so, the next stage of our adventure begins, as baby explores the world from a vertical perspective. And I prepare to leave behind her infancy, those days when she saw the world from her back, from her bottom, from her knees. Every step she takes is another step toward the person she's becoming, and another stride in my journey as a mother. And as we take this journey together, she knows that each time she falls, I will be there to pick her up. And I know that eventually, much sooner than I would like, she won't need me to. But that's OK. Eventually we will walk side-by-side. I couldn't ask for a better companion.