One small step for Jake...

I think it started with the walking up the stairs. This quickly became his favourite game, and part of his night time routine is that we'll put him down at the bottom and allow him to walk upstairs to the bathroom. It's very cute, but we have to be firm when he starts trying to come down again!

This turned into cruising where he pulls himself up on just about anything and then totters along, holding onto the side of whatever object he's near to. He finds this hilarious and you can track his movements from another room by the sound of the giggles as he moves round.

This in turn turned into supported walking behind Hurry Scurry (a dog on wheels courtesy of my older sister) or his car. The car was an inspired £10 purchase at a nearly new sale and has been useful for all stages of his walking development. The new favourite game is to walk to the front of the car, press the music button and bounce and dance along behind until the music stops, then repeat. The dancing cracks us up as well and puts a big smile on Jake's face too.

This is slowly coming into independent walking. The first sight we had was him standing up by himself in the middle of the living room and giggling maniacally as he fell down pretty much straight away. He then started taking one or two wobbly steps every now and then before dropping to his bum and shuffling the rest of the way.

My wife decided that to encourage this, she'd start walking short distances from the car to the house and from nursery to the car which I've been doing for the last couple of days. It does mean that it can take 5 minutes to cover the 50 yard distance, but the little puffs of effort and giggles from Jake holding onto my hand fills my heart with so much joy that all other worries fade away.

This decision to help him practice was compounded when I went to pick him up at nursery tonight. Normally he hears my voice, smiles and shuffles over as quickly as he can. Today, he heard my voice, smiled and took over a dozen steps towards me. It was such a wonderful sight to see, one that I know will stop being magical at some point, but one that for right now changes everything in the most wonderful way.

I can't wait for half term next week to do some more practicing!