When your baby starts walking is when your training begins, mama!
Dear mama.. My friend! Have you poured all your tears of joy when your baby finally put a foot in front of the other without slamming her face on the floor? Then get ready! Because what I’m about to say will make you smile, yes, but also petrify you for a couple of minutes. And most importantly, it’ll mentally prepare you to the idea that you have no choice: gotta get back in shape! Because when your baby starts walking, you inevitably start running! A lot!
When I wrote What to expect AFTER you’re expecting, I warned you there would have been a sequel. Therefore, let’s go straight to the point and find out all the reasons why, within few months, you’ll be ready for a 10k run!
1. There’s no safe place
She used to crawl on her belly or her knees and the highest spot she could reach was roughly 2 inches above the baseboard. And she couldn’t even get her hands off the floor because even the bravest attempts usually ended up at your advantage (a little less for her, right?).
Instead now, as a proud descendant of the Homo Erectus, she stands up and suddenly, with her little adorable evil fingers, she can reach outlets, kitchen cabinets and any possible kind of objects that you used to consider so cute and have now become possible weapons. Yep, they need to disappear for a few years at least.
When your baby starts walking, everything needs to be secured: drawers, cabinets doors, outlets, consoles/DVD players/dolby surround system and edges. And forget to accidentally leave a slipper around. If she stumbles on it executing a perfect triple axel, you’ll feel guilty forever. Believe me, I know!
Let’s not forget the most important part: when your baby starts walking, you’ll have to be behind her all the time. My advice is buy a good pedometer because you’re training has just began.
2. When you’re baby starts walking, your privacy is gone
Even though you successfully survived the phase in which you couldn’t walk around the corner without causing a Shakespearian tragedy, now get ready for THE OTHER phase: you can’t go anywhere without her. The first times you might think it’s sooooo sweet that she wants to follow you everywhere. You’ll watch her toddle around and you’ll think she’s growing so fast.. Too fast. And that the way she goofs around is so cute (sincerely laughing).
Then you’ll need to go to the bathroom and the party is over. She’s there.. Staring at you and trying to throw everything she can find in the toilet. Yep, while you’re sitting on it. So you’ll learn to complete your toileting, stand up on one foot and flush while with other foot you keep her at distance. Le Cirque Du Soleil, ladies and gentlemen.
Eh, what can you do? Better there with you where you can keep an eye (and foot) on her, rather than somewhere else destroying the house or finding multiple extremely creative ways to hurt herself. Privacy is gone mama. You’ll learn to adjust and wait until she’s distracted or on her high chair to run to the bathroom and enjoy a moment alone. True story.
3. In the kitchen
It’s dinner time and you need to cook something, but if you trap her in her playpen now that she’s discovered how wonderful is to explore, she’ll hate you from the deepest of her heart. So you “unleash the beast”. And what does the King Kong junior want to do? Clearly climb the oven to see why there’s steam coming out of the pot. So you’ll have to fence the kitchen in military-training-style, with barbed wire, electric fence and all that. Because when your baby starts walking, even your happy cooking time while shaking your booty to the music is gone.
Or you’ll have to run back and forth to entertain your child in the living room with some amazing activity while, at the same time, sprint back to the kitchen to flip the steak.
Phase two of the training = completed.
You think you can get distracted??
Then you fall back into your human skin and, for a nanosecond (literally), you forget that when your baby starts walking, she obviously wants to explore. So you make the mistake to leave the back door ajar after bringing the trash out. The time of a sip of water and she’s already a hundred yards away exploring the woods and speaking to a mouse that, compared to her, looks like a triceratops and surely has nothing to do with the cute little character from Ratatouille!
At that point you start a middle-distance run, clearly bringing the water bottle with you to avoid a performance dehydration. You run as there’s no tomorrow, not because she’s in real danger (even though I wouldn’t trust the triceratops), but to avoid her to go even deeper in the woods probably encountering Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf. The whole time wondering “how the heck could I forget the door open?”
Don’t worry mama, within few seconds (that will seem like ages to you) you’ll get to her and you’ll see that she happily survived, while you recover from the heart attack. It happens to all of us, trust me!
Simple errands become Sunday-intensive- training
You usually go do your grocery, to the post office and to the pet store putting your little one in the kart or the stroller, right? (evil laugh)
When your baby starts walking suddenly she doesn’t want to stay there anymore and you’ll have to hold her hands while, one baby step at the time, you get closer and closer to the post office employee who watches the entire scene as he was forced to watch a super boring movie. You’ll end up picking her up because the line behind you is getting pretty irritated. Then you’ll have to put her down to grab your wallet and, in a heartbeat, she’s already in the “fragile packages” department, destroying everything she touches.
So RUN MAMA, run like Forrest Gump! Or the experience will cost you a kidney on the black market! And hold her in your arms while you do everything.
Circuit training = done!
And house cleaning?
If it used to take you a couple of hours max, now it’s an endurance race. When your baby starts walking forget to be able to keep the broom or vacuum in your hands for longer than 1 minute. She’ll want to play with it. She’ll also be able to reach the laundry that you just finished folding and throw it everywhere. She’ll try to steal the swiffer out of your hands to swing it around releasing all the dust that you just collected.
Conclusion?
Sit down and give up. Wait until she’s napping and then run around while mopping the floor with one hand and throwing the sheets in the washer with the other. Skills that would make Michael Jordan proud.
And with this, we also covered hand-eye and fine motor coordination speed. There ya go!
Are you ready for the Marathon?
I say YES MAMA! You thought you wouldn’t have the time to do some physical activity and instead look at you! It’s when your baby starts walking that your training begins.
But don’t worry dear, it’s a marathon. Which means that it’ll take time, determination and consistency, and you’ll slowly start enjoying your rewards.
When she’ll want to play hide and seek or when she’ll climb the couch just to give you a kiss, or again when she’ll run to you after few hours apart, gushing pure joy.
In those moments you won’t have to run. There is where you stop and seize the day. It’s when you get to the finish line and you can finally sip your water, look back and be proud of your accomplishments. Clearly grabbing your well deserved medal!!
But just for a moment.. Because soon she’ll start talking.
Mama, at the point it’ll be your mental endurance that’ll count the most!!
P.S.= if you liked this article, don’t forget to share it 🙂 And don’t worry, there will be a third episode! 😉
