One of the few conveniences of children “fresh from the oven” so to speak is that they are, for the most part, immobile lumps of screaming humanity. So while yes they may cry uncontrollably, sleep erratically, and have sticky tar-like explosions, you can pretty much leave them wherever you would like and when you come back moments (or days) later, they will be where you left them. This is perfect for those moments when you want to steal away to the bathroom, or pop in the kitchen for a snack, or jet to the aquarium store to pick up yet another goldfish to replace the one your cat inexplicably fished out and ate.
Things become mildly more complicated when your little one figures out how to roll over. This precludes several normal infant resting spots, including atop the refrigerator and on the window sill next to the pie that you baked. But again, for the most part, and with proper use of chocks and wedges, it is possible to get away for a few moments to shoo away the Mormons or place bets with your bookie.
But at some point, despite all of your attempts to dissuade the practice, the proverbial lightbulb will click in your child’s head, and things will suddenly, and irreversibly, change forever.
Yes friends, our little Justine has learned to crawl.
It was a slow but sure process with her, taking several weeks for her to put all the pieces together. In what anthropologists have informed us is a fairly radical evolutionary mutation, she actually learned to pull herself into a sitting position before she learned to crawl. That happened very suddenly, and we were both shocked to watch her do it. From there we assumed crawling would be a snap.
Instead she laboriously practiced each individual component of the crawl, figuring out optimal launch angles, head position, and thigh-leg force quotients. She started by assuming the “position,” the classic “all fours.” It took her awhile to get her legs untangled – for about a week she was doing a patented “all three and a half.” After she mastered that she’d go up into the launch, and then rock forward, and then back into a sitting position. She would do this over and over again, and Kim and I would both sit forward, anticipating that “this was it.” Eventually we stopped paying attention, me going back to my organizing my lint collection by color and material and Kim practicing her squirrel calls.
Finally, one day she lunged forward and made a few tentative crawls before the expected Maggie Simpson landed her face-first in the carpet. Unfazed, she’d continue this learning process until she finally figured it out. We helped her along by enticing her to crawl in different directions, whether it be by waving an iPhone, dropping a ball, or tethering one of the cats to her. Now, she’s a crawling master, undeterred from undertaking epic quests and crossing entire rooms to bag whatever quarry she may be after. You know what this means.
Time to lock up the liquor cabinet. And EVERYTHING else.
