Putting on His Walking Shoes

I took Oliver to buy a new pair of shoes today because it felt like I was stuffing his little feet in those size four shoes he had been wearing. Plus, he needs a properly fitting shoe with a flexible sole for walking. Yes, Oliver is walking! Those shoes just aren't for show anymore.

To frame the expectations of what I mean by "walking," I must clarify that Oliver still does plenty of crawling. But in the past two weeks he'd progressed from taking a few steps (6.5 steps had been his max per attempt) about once a day to trying to walk as often as possible in the past few days. Although his walk exemplifies where the word "toddler" comes from, I've noticed he's become a lot more comfortable upright and moving on two feet. If he stumbles, he places his hands on the floor to steady himself, pops back up and continues on. Crawling is still the fastest for him, which he demonstrated when he heard his dad come through the door after a week-long business trip. Oliver dropped to the floor at the announcement that "Daddy's home!" and transitioned to the fastest signature crab crawl I've seen in awhile.

I'm guessing it could be a few weeks, or even months, until he stops resorting to crawling when he feels like it, so until then, I'll be resorting to carrying him wherever he can't crawl to, like to the car. My heavy-lifting days aren't behind me yet.