Like Mother Like Son

I have mentioned several times on this blog that I didn't walk until I was 19 months old. With Brennan's 20-month birthday quickly looming (Oct. 11th) I was beginning to think he was going to be an even later walker than me.

BUT...

THAT'S NOT THE CASE!

BRENNAN HAS STARTED WALKING!!!

Sorry for the all caps. I am just so excited. We will see how long it takes my excitement to turn to extreme exhaustion, but for now we couldn't be happier. Here's a little recap so I have everything all in one place.

Brennan has never crawled. Not even to this date. At his 15-month check-up, his pediatrician recommended he start PT to work on his core strength. She recommended this because he not only wasn't walking or crawling, but had never pulled himself to stranding, and couldn't go from laying down to sitting. At the end of May he had his PT evaluation and then started eight weeks of physical therapy.

On June 15, at physical therapy, Brennan started cruising. From that point until today, he has become a professional cruiser. He can even get from room to room by cruising. During his time at PT, he also learned how to go from laying down to sitting up and would occasionally pull himself to standing.

On June 20, again at physical therapy, Brennan took his first steps. He walked three steps from Ms. Jen to me. I thought that full-time walking was just around the corner at that point. Brennan, however, had different plans. For awhile he was doing well with taking some steps. He loved walking back and forth between Kyle and me. He would walk to me if I stood him with his back against a wall. One time at the playground he even took around 50 steps in a row. Recently, however, he has pretty much refused to walk. He has only been willing to walk while holding onto Momma's or Dada's finger. If we wanted him to walk between us, we literally had to give him a shove to get him to go.

Within the past week, Kyle and I had noticed a big improvement in B's ability to stand unassisted. I have said all along that I thought he needed to improve his balance and be able to stand independently in order to walk. At church on Sunday, Brennan was in the nursery. After the service, I noticed that he was taking some steps on his own. He would hold onto a chair and then let go and walk to a different chair. I was surprised because this was not like him at all. Kyle got to see him do it too. We grabbed lunch, came home to eat, and B took a long nap. His friend Parker was here to play when he woke up and B took a few more steps while playing outside with him. After Parker left, Kyle, Brennan, and I were all in the basement playing and Brennan started doing great with his walking. He was walking from support pole to support pole in the basement. He would let go of a pole and walk to us. And it was good, quality walking. Not I'm basically falling and taking a few steps kind of walking. True walking. We were shocked!

Kyle and I were laughing last night because we were afraid it might have been a fluke. We wondered if he'd still be able to do it today when he got up. It certainly wasn't a fluke. He's been walking up a storm today. We took him to the mall play place this morning and he walked there. He would go down the slide and then walk all the way back to the top of the slide by himself. A walk that required him to turn a corner. He walked some through the mall, although completely open spaces do seem to still make him slightly nervous.

So, it does seem like he takes after his Momma. He's a walker 19 months! I think he just didn't want to do it until he was confident enough to do it really well. I'm so proud of our little B-Nugget. Since he never crawled, he doesn't know how to climb, so we need to work on that. We also have to work more on pulling to standing, because he continues to struggle with that. Oh and I'll work on getting a good video of his walking. I have one, but I think I can get a better one for the blog!

Okay enough talking. Picture time! We took B too BF Clyde's Cider Mill tonight. We wanted to get some pics of him with the pumpkins. We did it last year and were excited to compare them and see how much he's changed.

BF Clyde's almost exactly one year ago:

BF Clyde's tonight:

Wow! What a difference a year makes!