Ellie is walking!

It is such an amazing moment when your infant starts walking. Those wobbly, chubby little legs first testing that they can keep balance and support their weight and then taking off and never looking back.

Ellie took starting to walk in stride. She hadn't been doing as much cruising as Jaime had been doing at that age but I could tell she was getting strong enough so I was curious about where she was with this one. She had been crazy mobile for a while and was really efficient at getting around crawling. But with a big brother running laps around us, it was very tempting for her to catch up with him.

Ellie did single steps with both Dan and I while we played on the living room floor. She sometimes did an afternoon nap strike so that she could get some one-on-one practice time while Jaime was napping. She could take the single and then two steps at a time just over 11 months.

Then at 11 and a half months she was off. Jaime was so excited and exclaimed "Ellie walking! Ellie walking!" as she took her first full on walk in the living room.

After that she was hooked.

She was regularly hanging onto my pant legs as she tried to walk with me while I made dinner. And Jaime would give her his hand to try to lead her off to play games. It didn't take long for her to get very good at walking. By Christmas she was a pro.

Our little dino was on her way to being a toddler!

(the photos in this post won't resize - I will try to update them later.)