Explosion of walking

There has happened an explosion in the last couple of days - an explosion of walking!

If before we rarely walked anywhere far, as I wrote - it started with going to look for the puddles. She was agreeing to walk then.. But not overly excited.

But now.. Every day, all day, it seems - she could just go outside! To walk. She takes her sweater, wants to put it on, gets frustrated as she can't put it on herself and can't close the zipper, then she brings it to me and I have to put it on, then she says - õue! - and we have to go outside. 

She takes me by hand, interestingly, she exactly likes to walk, holding onto my hand. She will even not walk at all, if not holding. (It's cute and a convenient concept - I already observed it, when we were at the shop once - she is so happy to hold by the hand and walk nicely.) And then we walk..

These are the toddler walks I wrote about. And exactly at the moment I am reading The Absorbent Mind book by Maria Montessori (a book review to come), and she is writing about this walking, and the tremendous importance of walking at this age, and exactly walking outside, in the nature, long distances while observing, in their own speed, the surroundings.

It might seem simple and logical - of course, children must walk. But no.. All you see, are toddlers strapped in strollers, with a blank look in their eyes.. Being taken where their mothers need to take them. 

It's not simply that they must walk. They must (and it's all they want at this point) perfect this skill. And not only it is to perfect the walking (being upright, balancing, meeting different terrain and overcoming obstacles) as such, it is to learn - learn about the environment, about nature, about order of the world. 

(There would be more to say, but then one must read the book himself, I guess.)

So Adelaide wants to walk. I have to get over my laziness and go outside with her, many times a day. Today, apart from calmer period in the morning, when we were at first reading books and then she was playing on her own, while I was reading my book, the rest of day we didn't do much else than walking.

Apart from shorter walks around our own yard (still barefoot, in the cold and wet grass, on the rocks as well, it's interesting as once she didn't mind walking on sharp rocks, other times she doesn't like it), we took the longest walk yet! 

I looked in the map.. It was at least 500 m in one direction, or more, so together at least 1 km. We went out from the yard, onto the road, watched cars driving on the big road, we walked towards the big rock, she wanted to run down the ditch, then we ran around the big rock a couple of times and observed the hole in the rock, then we saw some flowers, found that ground is full of acorns under the oak tree, she picked some, as well as some hats of acorns, I showed her to match the acorn to the hat and she did it with couple others, we walked on and saw many leaves on the ground, we walked up the stairs of the school building, we walked down the stairs, we saw some bikers passing, we heard a dog bark, we walked through an alley and looked up, she liked it a lot, we walked up a small hill and then she saw a river and wanted to run right down to it, we walked on the bridge and she was really excited about the river (even though we have passed here with her in the stroller, this is obviously the first time she noticed it), she stopped many times to kneel down and point at the river, immediately repeating: upe! (river in Latvian), then we heard the dog bark and walked to see the dog, and stood and watched the dog, she was crazily excited, jumping and pointing at the dog and answering to it, we saw more cars passing, and more bikers, she liked the bikers, we walked back and stopped even more times to point at the river, we walked down the hill and back through the alley, she stopped a few times to let go of my hand and touch the trees and point at them, we saw some children and she had to walk towards them, then we saw them passing and being so cool and exciting, then we saw some benches and she had to go and sit on the bench, and also we saw some flowers, we stopped for a longer time at the acorns, she was spending there quite a long time, trying to take as many as she could in her hands - she had like 4 in her hand, once she tried to take more, other one fell out, then she tried to get it back and like this for many minutes, finally she had 3 in one hand, 4 in other and 1 in her mouth and she agreed to come home, we walked all the way home, she wouldn't let go of the acorns, almost reaching home she got tired or just resistant, but we made it all the way.. :)