Dreaded Mobility

I can't believe I haven't informed all of you about the latest news around here: Nathan is mobile.

It started up sometime last week when I noticed he finally found a way to get to his belly from a sitting position. He leans forward really far, flipping his legs around to behind him. Basically, he leans forward far enough that he does the splits and ends up falling onto his belly. I wish I was half that flexible.

Once on his belly, Nathan is great at getting where he wants to go. He isn't officially crawling yet, with his belly off the floor and everything, but he's mastering the army crawl quickly. The only problem? He can only go backwards. Apparently I had the same problem when I was first learning to crawl. One day the dog came up behind me and nudged me with her nose as if to say, "Silly human baby, you're supposed to go the other way." The story goes that from that day on I always crawled normally.

Amber? Time to step up there, girl!

Seriously, though, I'm not worried about it. He'll figure out how to pull forward with his arms, letting his legs propel him as well, instead of just pushing back with his arms.

In the meantime, he has developed another technique for getting where he wants to go if he doesn't want to get there a roundabout way. He'll stay in a sitting position and pull himself forward with his arms, scooting everywhere. Again, he's really quite efficient with this. We're finding that our baby-proofing is definitely going to be tested over the next few weeks as he is already showing interest in things that Patrick always ignored.

Nathan also pulled up completely on his own yesterday. He's been doing it while holding onto our fingers with little assistance from us, but he finally found a good place to try it on his own. He was standing before I even realized what was happening. It's possible he'll get so interested in walking that he may skip real, normal crawling for now.

I think it may be time to reassemble the baby cage and fill it with safe toys.