The Breeders: Walking (sort of)

There are two ways to knit: English and Continental. Most people knit the English way, holding the yarn in your right hand and "throwing" it over the needle in your left. It is the easiest way to learn to knit, but it is not the fastest. If you are going for speed you will want to knit in the Continental fashion, which requires holding the yarn in your left hand and learning how to find the proper tension to manipulate the yarn without dropping stitches. 

I technically know how to do both, and while I may complain that knitting takes forever, I rarely knit in the faster Continental style. Why? because it would require learning how to do it better, and there is a bit of a learning curve. I would have to knit more slowly while learning to knit more quickly and my biggest fault is impatience. 

That is why when I make something, I usually crochet it. A hat that will take eight hours versus one that will be done in one? If you ever recieve a gift from me that is knitted, I must really, really like you.

As I had , it seems The Kid has inherited my impatience. 

Shortly after he was , he was pulling himself up to standing and beginning to cruise. He had a blast getting himself to places he wanted to be and having a whole host of new things to see on the coffee table and bookshelves. Some friends lent us their  to help develop his new skill (their daughter was running at about 10 months) and he races up and down the hall with it.

For months we have been saying he is "this close" to walking. It seemed that any minute he would let go and take that first step, but when he got bored with the  and wanted to check out the mail on the coffee table, he would turn, take a step and then realize he could be rifling through the catalogues faster if he dropped to his knees and crawled. 

We decided finally to use some incentive like we did when he was starting to crawl, so we spent a few nights sitting across from each other tempting him with an iPhone. Incentive worked when he needed to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B, but now he already knows how to do that — he crawls. 

It has been working, though we dropped the iPhone since Mama and Daddy are much better incentive. Four weeks ago he took his first unassisted step — but then he got so excited he lost his balance and fell down. This is the nightly ritual: we sit across from each other and tell him to walk to Mama or Daddy, he takes a step or five (the record thus far is 10), then gets so excited he dances and claps until he falls down and crawls to one of us for congratulatory hugs and kisses. 

I guess I'm not too disappointed that he inherented a little inpatience.