notes on walking, and a long rabbit trail

Well, today was a fun walking day. She was skittish about it when she first woke up, but the longer she was awake, the more comfortable she got. Then after she took a nap, we had to start all over! But it was fun. I love having a walking child!! She did get her first walking injury today, pictured below (it was actually a lot worse looking and much more swollen before her nap):
She has a habit of kind of “diving” into our arms when she gets close, and she thought she could do the same thing with the coffee table and it would catch her. . . well it caught her. But I was so proud of her – she didn’t let it scare her from walking! She can tend to be rather easily scared from doing things, so I really thought it would be a setback, but it wasn’t! Thank goodness.

Tonight we had her walking back and forth between Chris and I feeding us Skittles. One of us would have the bag, and she would get a skittle, turn and go to the other person, put the Skittle in their mouth, turn and walk back to the Skittle-bag-holder. It was teaching walking, turning, sharing, and not stealing other people’s skittles!! She got a few of her own in there too, but only when we put them in her mouth – she never tried to eat the ones she was taking to Mommy or Daddy!!!

Here’s a picture of her on the go:

And, if you ever thought God didn’t answer small prayers, here’s a copy of the “prayer card” that I started to ask God to help Ali start walking a couple of weeks ago: Come to think of it, I’ve never blogged about my prayer cards, so I better explain them (off the subject of walking, but hey – it’s my blog!). This is how I keep up with prayer requests – I write them on the top of an index card and pray for them for 40 days. I LOVE it because that way I can track answered prayers (notice my excitement in writing the answer to the side), and unlike a prayer request list, it never gets unwieldy and huge and I quit doing it out of frustration, because the prayer requests “roll off” after 40 days. I always try to remember to start one of these cards every time someone asks me to pray for something or I tell someone that I will pray for them so that I don’t forget to honor my commitment.

I have been amazed at God’s answers to my prayers when I pray for things for 40 days – I know there is nothing magical in the number, but it’s still neat. Such as after trying to get pregnant for two years, I wasn’t ready to start the fertility treatments that we had prepared for, so I asked Chris if we could set aside 40 days before we started treatments and pray first – and we found out that I was pregnant the week after those 40 days were over!! Another time, I had a relationship that I desperately wanted restored. God put it on my heart to pray for 40 days about it, and He gave me the complete confidence that He was going to answer, and before the 40 days ended, that person contacted me – after over a YEAR of not hearing a single word from them!

So, yes, I know – my prayer card method is a perfect example of my overly objective personality coming forward (I can hear several members of my family laughing at me now) – but I love it – and I love tracking what I have prayed for and God’s answers to those prayers.

So, back to the me praying that she would start walking, I suppose that God said “well, if you want her to walk right now. . . “, and so He let me get deathly ill, go to the doctor twice, get sent to the ER, pay $250 in copays and prescriptions, and not be able to walk across the room without almost fainting so that Ali would stay at Mom and Dad’s for three days and Dad would finally get desperate enough to teach her to walk that He would sit her down and have “the walking talk” with her. Thanks, God, for answered prayers. :)

p.s. – it was all worth it!!