Steps

Look what Lucas did today!




Events like this make me puzzled about the things I hear parents say, and the questions we ask them. As you can see from the video, Luke really did take a few steps on his own here, so you could say that he started walking today. But as you can also see, it's not exactly going to be his main mode of transportation for a few weeks. (You can really see that in the extended-remix version of the video in the sidebar. As always, if that video pops up underneath the one above, click it again: The magical internets will whisk you off to YouTube for an unobstructed view.)

So, you might ask us months from now, when did Lucas start "walking"? If I had to give a single date I guess it would be today, at 13 months and 29 days old; and yet....

The same goes for Luke's first word. He kind of said "duck" there, at nine months and change; but a couple of weeks after that video he generalized "duh" to mean just about anything he found interesting. (Now it's become a question: "What's that?") He said "dada" and "mama" around the same time, maybe even earlier, but how can we tell when he meant anything specific when he said them? Fast forward to today, and he's unequivocally got a vocabulary: He has used "bah" to mean "balloon" for a few months, and -- clearest of all -- he said "bubble" a couple of weeks ago. But when exactly he said his first word is in the eye of the beholder.

So that's what I'm puzzled about when it comes to parent-speak: How the ^%%#@ can anybody be so confident when they say "my baby walked at eleven-and-a-half months"?

Jill may file a dissenting opinion shortly. She thinks David reads too much philosophy.


p.s. Just to be clear, even David is proud as punch about his baby today! And both of us would like to take this opportunity to thank Luke's teachers for hiding the fact that he probably started walking like this at daycare last week....