Saturday, August 25, 2012

An Eliana first: She walked.

Eliana held the handle of a French door in one hand and a toy in the other. The toy was a seal on a wheel attached to a shaft, just the right height for Eliana to hold while standing. So she stood. The seal flaps its flippers as the wheel rolls, but you need to move forward to make that happens. So she let go of the door handle and walked.

We had tried to encourage Eliana to walk before, the result of which was a few seconds of her standing on her own. What motivated her turned out to be her brother. Not anything he did at that moment, but she had seen him playing with the Seal Swimmer toy—something worth taking steps toward mimicking.