Baby is walking at 15 months

At four or five months I didn’t expect much in terms of walking. At nineish months friend’s babies started walking and we figured we would have a toddler soon enough. When that didn’t happen the guess was probably at 11-13 months when three out of four babies walk.

All this time Maggie wasn’t even crawling normally, she scootched like I imagine the Ring (horror movie,) girl did down a hallway. One leg out front, one leg sort of tucked under, scootching her way forward and getting into all sorts of trouble. At one year she could stand on her own but she wasn’t taking any steps.

At 14 months Maggie still wasn’t walking. We’d been to a well visit at one point just to have her checked out about 13 months, the diagnosis was that she was in perfect health, had all the musculature to handle walking, but wasn’t for reasons only known to the devious baby. She would walk if her hands were being held however.

At 15 months we were back at the doctor for a checkup and booster shots. The same concern was addressed to the doctor (not our normal one, nor the last one we saw,) and once again we were told that she was fine and capable of doing it but just not.

15 months 19 days, she’d taken a couple of steps this week, nothing particularly worth writing home about. They were more shambling attempts to remain standing than a walk.

Then she took three steps…stopped and stood. Sat down. Stood up. Took a few more steps. Stopped. Plopped down. Stood up. We knew something was going on, but there was not any way to guess when she was going to go and attempt to walk, and standing her up didn’t help.

Our friend Brooke came over and brought her iPhone, used it as a baby lure, and Maggie took several steps in a row to grab the phone. She eventually walked about 14 steps with a slight turn on her own. She was pretty pleased with herself at that point.

It was bedtime however, but Maggie wasn’t particularly interested in going to sleep. After the last set of sleepless nights we were not particularly inclined to break bedtime for anything. I watched her in her crib on the monitor as she stood up and walked around the crib. And there was that.

Maggie’s finally a bit of a walker… not a particularly skilled one yet. Her skillset seems to be quick twitch reaction, absurd baby strength, and the ability to look like she understands everything you say.

But I’ll say baby is walking at 15 months now… well, 15 & 1/2, but she’s an awesome kid so we’ll mark it 15.