Jett has been on the verge of walking for some time now. He seems a bit hesitant to let go of whatever he's holding on to for more than a short moment, so we decided we needed to help him up his game by getting him to practice taking the risk of just taking flight! Our rigid training course that we put him through consists of him going back and forth between our couch and coffee table...all of maybe 5 feet. I know, our living room is so huge. Jett has found this very exciting! To motivate him to start taking those first few steps, Jake was a genius and figured out that we needed to have Jett walk towards something up in the air on the opposite side from him instead of just putting an object on the floor to get...Jett would end up just diving towards the object and crawling for it. But if we put Jake's hat on his head or waved an object around in the air, then Jett was compelled to keep his body up and stay standing up while walking towards it. So brilliant!...I know, you're writing that tip down. So, here are a few video clips of this exciting work-in-progress.
In this first clip, poor Jett gets so excited for take-off that he takes his steps too fast and instantly stumbles over, even before Jake can finish his sentence! He lands straight on his face as his legs fly behind him sprawling out, and I instantly stopped recording so I could rush to his rescue. Poor guy starting crying quite a bit after his face smashing...buuuuut that hasn't stopped me from watching this video over and over while laughing hysterically everytime at the ending. Sorry, Punkin Bears! Oh, and he was very excited over his new sporty Mickey Mouse jammies that he's wearing.
Jett was put to the test the next day by Jake and Gage while I was at work, and the result was much better...and smoother. Mickey Mouse jammies not included. Here he manages a successful walk from the coffee table to the couch! Being bribed with a treat sitting on the couch, of course. He's like a puppy. Treats work like a gem! (Tip #2.) You can hear Jett's little panting from "working so hard" and can see how excited he gets towards the end when he does a bit of an excited dive to the couch for that last stretch of carpet and then happily munches on his treat. Much praise afterwards! I would've gobbled him up if I was there. He's getting closer!
Finally, I've now thrown in a loop during this week's rigorous training...I introduced Jett to his sweet shark Vans shoes that I bought over a year ago for Father's Day when I was pregnant. These babies are so dang adorable and look even better on his chubber legs. Jett is not used to shoes (at least not ones this heavy instead of just a soft crib shoe), so now we're upping his game even more by challenging him to get used to shoes! He's got his work cut out for him...especially because these shoes have proven to be quite the distraction when he gets a sight of them on his feet. I imagine his thought process is something like this: "La, la, la, playin' with my toys, puttin' this in my mouth, gonna slobber on th--WHAT! What is this creature on my foot?! I'm gonna eat dis"...and then I remove the shoe from his mouth that he has managed to slip off his foot to chew on. See? Puppy dog.
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