One small crawl for David, one giant change for the family

For several days now, David has been toying with the idea of crawling. It took him several weeks to get himself into the position---that is to be able to transition himself from sitting down to being on his hands and knees. The next step in his learning was to be able to drive his legs while at the same time moving his left arm forward, his first little step.

For a while, several days, in fact, that seemed to be about as far as he could go. His main problem was that his right arm was always bearing his weight and so he couldn’t figure out how to transfer his weight from one arm to the other. Hence, he would take one crawl, get to the point where he needed to transition his weight to the other arm, and inevitably fall down. But, this process of falling down repeatedly got him very good at getting into the crawling position. David is now quite adept at hopping back up after he biffs it. But, he was still stymied by his lack of progress in figuring out the final step of crawling—but he was oh so close.

In fact, for the past few days, David had figured out a modified method of moving himself around the room. He would transition himself from sitting to the crawling position, only to then move back into the sitting position. But, he discovered, if he changed the angle of his body while in the crawling position, he would end up in a different location once he returned to the sitting position.

Well, all of that changed last night (Friday). The light bulb went off in his head, and all of the sudden he was just able to crawl. At first it was only a few crawls before plopping down on the floor. Soon it was 4, then 6, and now he is into double digits.

Even though it is indeed wonderful that David is crawling, it has quickly become apparent that this apartment is not made for a kid. First of all, it has only one plug in the living room, which means that we have surge protectors and cords running all over the floor. Also, the radiator heating system is right at the level which David can reach. We only have a bit of carpet, and the rest is hardwood that has been painted—some of which is chipping off. Finally, the walls, which are wallpapered, have places where the paper is peeling off. All of which is making us wonder about the best way to protect David. Right now we are talking about building some sort of fort, or walls, around his play space, so that he doesn’t go crawling off. I say that we just surround him with razor wire, and after one adventure with that stuff, he won’t go ANYWHERE (just kidding, moms). But seriously, we are probably going to go shopping today go see what we can find to protect David from himself. While it is indeed great that he can now crawl all around, I must admit that it was really nice to be able to set him down with his toys and let him play for a minute on his own—without worrying what he might get himself into.