The walking wounded

Callum has been walking for about a month now, and he's gotten pretty good at it. He's still a little staggery, and he still holds his arms out for balance, but he walks everywhere instead of crawling by now, and he actually bends his knees when he moves, and he's much more stable.

What this means is that when he's walking, he's much less likely to randomly lose his balance and land on his butt. However, as he gains confidence he moves faster and tries to do more, and that means that he's much MORE likely to trip or stumble and land on his face. The early walking phase is a constant test of a parent's blood pressure and also their ability to say, "It's OK! You're fine!" even when the child is gushing blood.

Here is a visual exhibit of what has happened to him just in the past week or so.


1. Yesterday he tried to lunge forward to grab the dog but she nimbly jumped out of his way and as a result, he fell forward and scraped his cheek on the corner of the wall in our kitchen. That sucked. It was so sad too because he was so happy and chortling over the dog and then two seconds later he was lying on the floor screaming. He actually only scraped the top layer or two of skin off his cheek, so it's maybe not quite as bad as it looks.

2. A couple days ago he was walking around our hotel room in Vegas (separate post on that coming soon) and he tripped and fell forward and whacked his forehead on the knob of a nightstand drawer. It bruised and swelled up immediately, and there's also a little cut. Baby's first goose egg! I tried to apply ice, but you can imagine how kindly he took to that.

3. Also in our hotel room in Vegas, he stumbled and landed chin-first on the coffee table. His chin was fine but he bit his tongue and was spitting blood. Torsten was convinced that he'd damaged a tooth or something, but once he stopped bleeding we were able to clearly see the little cut on his tongue.

4. I don't think you can see this one in the picture, but the other day he tripped in our living room and fell face-first onto the coffee table. He was holding a toy in each hand at the time and so he didn't put his hands out to catch himself, and his chin took the worst of it. He bled a fair amount (all over one of my favorite of his t-shirts! But luckily I managed to wash the stains out before they set and now it's pristine again) but the cut was actually pretty shallow so we didn't have to debate about whether he needed stitches or anything like that.

5. That's just oatmeal, because I took this photo while he was eating breakfast.

You can see that the poor kid has had a rough week! Luckily you can also see that he is still as cheerful as ever, despite his banged-up face. Still, I'm looking forward to the phase where his walking confidence matches up with his skills and he is actually likely to stay on his feet even while attempting complicated maneuvers such as lunging or running. When will that be?