Taking small steps!

walking with babies and children

Thanks to those kind people who have sponsored me already to walk the 10,000 steps.  March is the beginning of the challenge and March is tomorrow.  I need sponsors to shame me into making sure that I do those steps.  You can be one if you follow THIS LINK.

Rising from my accustomed idleness towards the goal of 10,000 steps, I find (thanks Rachel) that there is an app with a heart which tells me how many footsteps I have taken each day.  About 4000 does the dog walk once, 2000 is round the house and up and down the stairs and then there are the very teeny tiny small steps I take attached to the once teeny tiny now nearly walking baby who is back for a short stay because her mother has the flu.  I realise that meditation is not physical exercise and nor is tapping away on the computer and that both those non-activity activities haven't prepared me for doubling my daily walk.  Even if I take very small steps on the dog walk, it doesn't add much so I realise I just have to double the effort.

Walking round and round the kitchen with the about to be walking baby gets easier as she gets taller because I don't have to lean over so far.  It is a most interesting thing watching a baby grow up.  We are excited by each new step, thrilled when she pulls herself up but then realise that shortly all the kitchen cupboards will need to be made Bea proof.  I am thinking as I walk round the kitchen and up and down the hall with those small fingers tightly gripping mine that before long, she will be off, she will be walking around by herself.  And then she will be walking out of the front door attached to a hand and eventually she will be out of that door, will have passed her driving test and be waving us all goodbye as she takes 

off to University and then into life and perhaps off to foreign lands.  When you are in the midst of rice cakes and broken nights you can't imagine the day when that baby who seemed to actually belong to you, has taken her or himself off into his or her own life.  It is partly a triumph and partly a rather sad part of being a mother or grandmother.