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Emmie has taken her first steps! OK, so they were taken while holding onto Peter’s hands, but that is a HUGE improvement from even Monday, as you may remember, when we took her in to have her evaluated because she wasn’t making as much progress toward walking as one would hope. One of the things she specifically failed on her screener was “walking while holding onto an adult’s hands.”
I don’t know if I’ve written it here, but one of Emmie’s quirks is that she HATES having her hands or feet held. Up until now, the biggest impact this has had has been on social interactions. Interestingly, when meeting a baby, many people will reach a finger out to the baby’s hand or try to grab it (especially since Emmie usually has her hand or finger reaching out to point at the new person). Emmie’s response to this is to pull her hand away, sometimes with an affronted look at the offending hand. This invariably causes the person to also pull away and usually stops the social encounter. (I told you she was a princess. You simply do not *touch* a princess, particularly without being invited!). The other issue it has caused is with nail cutting, but I’ve figure out ways around this.
However! It’s a serious impediment to walking if you won’t even let your mama or dada hold your hand while you try to walk. So. She got a walker toy and loves it.
Fast forward to yesterday. Peter decided to try walking while holding her hands again… and she did it! And LOVED IT!!! She literally just laughed the entire time. Graduating from just taking a few steps to Mommy, she then proceeded to walk all around the dining room, quickly deciding that she only wanted Daddy to hold ONE of her hands, so she walk walking while only holding onto one hand (which, I believe was one of the OTHER things she failed on the test!). This was actually really encouraging for me to see, since I know from other friends with babies Emmie’s age that it took them quite a while to go from walking with two hands to walking with one hand. So if Emmie did both milestones within the span of 5 minutes, maybe our little “mild to moderately delayed” baby will make it yet!