Almost walking...

Rose is cruising along all of the time now. She only crawls when she wants to get somewhere quick. The rest of the time she's cruising along the furniture, or pushing a craft table chair around. The weather is getting somewhat warmer and it will be nice to go to the park soon...this requires Rose to have some sort of solid footwear in order to cruise around the park or hold my hands to walk. I brought her to Kinder Soles to get her first pair. I wasn't sure what kind to get, but the lady said that she could do with real shoes as she is on her feet over 75% of the time, and they will probably last around 3 months...in which time she'll definitely be walking. Of course she doesn't need to wear shoes all the time, but she can benefit from wearing them if we're outside, etc. And since she's on her feet a lot at home she can wear the shoes for a bit to get used to them.

She is so close to walking. She can fully walk just holding onto one of my fingers for balance. She just needs the confidence to do it on her own. She knows that she can crawl really fast, so she will just drop to her knees and crawl rather then attempt to transition between 2 close objects. I wouldn't be surprised though if she took a few steps any day now. Paige was already walking at this exact same age. I think walking would initially slow Rose down, which is why she prefers to crawl super-fast to keep up with Paige!

As an aside note, proper walking shoes from a kids store aren't cheap! Mike's first shoes were $10ish apparently for good ones, and, well, Rose's were a lot more than that! Seems crazy, but I have always splurged on quality shoes thinking that it is a good thing to spend the extra money on. I hope so.