This walker's made for walking...backwards

Yesterday morning, Nora was exceptionally well behaved. After breakfast (she's most docile after a meal) I set her on the floor in the living room and did my "toss a toy to the other side of her and leave the room before she notices" Batman exit. She remained there playing alone without complaint for 45 minutes (and she's doing it again today as I type) while I trimmed my RSS feed and got some stuff done around the house. When she couldn't take it anymore, I put her in the walker and wheeled her into the kitchen so she could watch me do the dishes. As I was scrubbing dishes, I was thinking about how wonderful her behavior was that morning, and how she wasn't even complaining that I was ignoring her with the dishes. About that time my "maybe it's too quiet" mammalian neurons fired and I spun around to see what she was up to. She had vanished!! I went to the kitchen door, and there she was up against the wall on the other side of the hallway reaching with all her arm length to touch the wooden door frame of the bathroom. So I wheeled her back into the kitchen and watched her back out into the hallway before pulling her into the kitchen again and angling the walker so she couldn't get out the door again.

It's just further evidence of a behavior/ability we've seen developing already: walking backwards in the walker. And if you think about it, the seated posture the walker puts her in is much more conducive to going backwards. If you had to get from one end of a hallway to another quickly without standing up from your wheeled office chair, you'd spin around and push yourself backwards.

The trick to going forwards in the walker is actually standing up straight and supporting all your own weight, something she's done a few times and something we'll be encouraging.

Caught in the act.