Walking: Finally Captured on Film

Landon has been standing up on his legs since he was four months old. He's been pulling up, walking around the furniture, and pushing anything with wheels for what feels like forever. And then finally, about a month ago, he took a few tentative steps on his own. The first time he did it he was in our bathroom while I was getting ready to go to work to study for the Bar. He had been holding on to the drawer where I keep my hair products (he loves them- so colorful and so loud when you bang them on tile) and suddenly he pushed off from it, took three steps, smiled, and sat down hard on his diapered behind. Since then we've all known he could walk if he wanted to, he just preferred to crawl at hyper speed, carrying things in his hands, and banging them on the floor with every move. For the last week or so he's even stood up on his own in the middle of the room, taken a few steps, clapped for himself (while standing), and then sat down with a smug smile as if to say "see, it's so easy I don't even need to prove I can do it."

I've been trying to capture these short bursts of vertical mobility on film since they began, but Landon recognizes the camera and seems to take great joy out of NOT walking as soon as he sees it. He smiles and laughs and claps at his own refusal to cooperate- I think he knows he's thwarting my motherly need to document his every developmental move. But then this morning I was taking some random video of him in the living room, hoping to trick him into walking once the film was rolling, and he finally obliged.

So here's my increasingly mobile, chatty, oh so handsome, sometimes serious, and always smiley, little man: