Well! Since my last post a week ago, Claire has improved her ability to crawl! She’s still not super-fast, but she is much faster than she was last Friday. It really started on Monday, when I enticed her to crawl toward some blocks I had piled up, knowing that she wanted to knock them down. Sometimes she will see me in her room at the end of the hall, and she starts to make her way towards me – it’s pretty exhausting for her right now, though, so she usually only makes it close to the end of the living room before she either gives up and plays with something close to her, or I feel bad and go pick her up.
It has also meant more bumps and falls. I keep telling Neal that he needs to stop worrying so much about the hardwood floors that are in the living room, hall, and our bedrooms, because she’s not going to stay in one place anymore. It’s not that I’m heartless; it’s just that I know there’s not much we can do, and it’s all part of mastering mobility. I’ve discussed it with lots of other parents, and everyone goes through the same thing.
One thing that does worry me a lot is when she crawls over to the coffee table and tries to pull herself up. She did that on Monday, lost her balance, and fell to the floor. She was fine – she cried for maybe a minute while I held her, and then it was like it had never happened. I’m also more nervous about her falling on the bathroom or foyer floors, as they are now porcelain tile.
Now, when I bring her into the bedroom while I’m folding laundry, I no longer put her on the bed. She moves around so much that it’s much safer to leave her on the floor. At least the fall won’t be as big if she does tumble!
We’ve upped our babyproofing, and it means some changes to how I do things around the house. Over are the days when I could put her on her mats surrounded by toys and figure she’d be in more or less the same spot when I came back into the room. So if I’m doing something that makes me leave the room for more than a minute or two, I bring her with me. Or, if I’m going somewhere where it’s not easy for me to peek in, such as going down to the laundry room in the basement, she comes along.
But the changes and the fact that I’m running a little bit more than I used to matter when I see the look of pure delight on her face when she crawls.
Oh yeah. She also pulls herself up to her knees in her crib. The mattress has since been lowered to the next level
Some other firsts:
* Everyone survived Neal and I going to my work party last Friday evening. Well okay, it’s not the first time Claire has been away from both of us, but it was only the second time, and the first time it was Neal’s parents looking after her, it was only for an hour, and she was napping for most of it. Nina said that Claire cried a fair bit when she was going to bed, as we expected, but finally settled down, and she slept through until the next morning. The party itself was a blast, as usual!
Distracted by the Berkmans while Mommy and Daddy left to go to Mommy's party
* She has sat in the kid’s part of the shopping cart a couple of times, rather than being pushed along in her stroller. Don’t get me wrong – she loves being in her stroller, especially now that she sits facing forward where she can see everything, but ohmygod, she literally SQUEALS with delight when she’s being pushed around the store in the cart.
* We joined some friends on Wednesday and went to the pool over at Cole Harbour Place. We’ve dipped her feet in a lake and the Saint John River, and she was not pleased with either experience. But she loves her bath, and they keep the kiddie pools a little warmer than the adult ones, so she had a total blast, splashing around.
* And, what I have been looking forward to all season! We took her to see Santa yesterday! Neal took the day off so that we could go in the early afternoon before the big line-ups started. She developed an aversion to being held by other people quite early, when she was about four months old, but she has been improving a lot recently. But although I had some hope that maybe she wouldn’t totally freak about when sitting on Santa’s lap, I also knew that it was really common for kids to do that.
She didn’t cry! She only smiled a couple of times, and they were never caught on camera, but she didn’t cry! Her lower lip started to jut out a teeny bit at the end, but there were absolutely no tears! I was so proud of her!
