Zander's Little Secret

Last Thursday I discovered that Zander has been keeping a secret from us: he can walk. For those of you who haven't seen us lately, Zander has been dragging out his "learning to walk" phase for ages. He went from crawling to walking on his knees (which he still does a lot) to walking with assistance. He can walk fine if holding on to a wall, hand, stroller, etc, but refuses to walk alone.

Then on Thursday I came around the corner to see him walking across the living room. I cheered and congratulated him. He responded by getting upset, saying "no!" and dropping down to his knees.

Hmmmm....

I decided to drop the subject and for the past few days we have just been pretending not to notice as he walks around the house.

 So what does this mean?

My hunch is that his perfectionist streak is making him self-conscious. It feels like he wants to get it "right" before he shows us he can walk. At one point when he thought I couldn't see him, I watched him walk across the room, then smile and applaud for himself.

There is also the possibility that he likes having to hold a hand when walking. It is kinda sweet, though he can be pretty demanding about it!

And maybe we have been putting too much pressure on him, trying to get him to walk. He's a pretty sensitive kid, so he probably senses that I've been getting anxious about him being a "late walker" (whatever that means).

I think we will just drop the whole subject and see how this plays out over the next few days....