More physical activity would be good for all of us, especially A-. If she burns more energy, she’ll eat more, which means taking in more nutrients and broadening her tastes. She’ll build muscles and improve coordination, and she might even develop good habits. As for me, I want to be able to keep up with her and W-, and I want to improve my own health.

The more time she spends crawling, the better. When I take her to the Junction Family Resource Centre, the toys around the room give her reasons to crawl and explore. Bonus points for socialization and independent play, too. At home, she enjoys crawling after me when we play hide-and-seek, so I’ll make that part of our bedtime routine (and maybe our morning routine as well). We have floor beds in her room, so that lets her practice climbing up and down as well.

When she starts walking, she’ll have even more opportunities to be active. We can toddle around the house and in the neighbourhood centres. We’ll figure out how to walk around outside, too – the backyard, the sidewalk, the park, the playground. She can carry, push, and pull things to develop her arm strength.

Her microphthalmia means that she can’t use stereopsis for depth perception and she has to rely on other cues, so she may be a little more hesitant or clumsy. Because she wears a conformer, we’ll also need to periodically check if it’s still in her eye, search for it if it has fallen out, and plan for replacements due to growth or loss. None of these things should stop her from enjoying an active childhood, though.

Kids like imitating, so we can model that by being active ourselves. W- is great in that regard, and I’m working on it as well. I like walking, so she’ll get a lot of exposure to that. W- has been building a habit of daily stretches and I’d like to do that too. When that’s solid, I can add stuff for building strength and endurance. I’ve been enjoying babywearing as a form of exercise, too. Fortunately, A-‘s been growing gradually enough for me to keep up with her.

I’ve been thinking about classes and community resources that could be helpful. Since she likes somersaults so much, it might be nice to take her to toddler gymnastics. There’s a place within walking distance that has classes for babies who are at least 9 months old, so we’ll observe a session and think about signing up for the next course. It’s nice to have a well-padded place to practice tumbling and falling. There are also a number of well-equipped playgrounds close by, which will be good when she’s a little older.

There’ll also be time for her to work on other capabilities, like fine motor skills. Opportunities to do so tend to be abundant, so we’ll make more of a conscious effort to encourage gross motor skill development. We’ll go with what she’s interested in, and we’ll help influence her interests too.