She Crawls!

Well, Thanksgiving vacation in Utah worked WONDERS for Little Chub!! Seeing all of her cousins running circles around her helped her realize that she could actually move...and so she did! Little Chub learned to crawl with many fans cheering her on, and she also pulls up to a standing position on things that are taller than the 1 foot in height that she could previously stand with. Now, she still doesn't crawl much, but her favorite thing in the world is to stand up holding on to the nearest stable item (and sometimes unstable) she can find. Then she just stands there, and it looks like she's practicing how to stand up with good balance. I will try to get a picture of this soon...

More on Mobility

So Little Chub has made a little bit of progress on the path to mobility... Sunday night was a squirm forward. Little Chub was playing on the floor with her toys and started eyeing a ziploc bag with a loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread in it that we had on the floor to occasionally grab chunks of. She started reaching for the bag, and right when she was about to get it, I moved it forward a foot or two, so she squirmed her arms and legs and got closer to it, and I moved it again. So she squirmed again. And again. And again. And again. You get the point. She squirmed probably about 8 or 9 feet, all to get this bag of pumpkin bread. (She did rather like the taste of it, but I think she was a little more interested in the bag.) Then, I moved the bag so that she had to turn, and she squirmed bit by bit halfway back before she got tired of chasing the pumpkin bread. The funny thing is that she had no idea when it was all done that she had done something she's never done before, and personally, I think it's because she's been capable of this for a VERY long time. So, now my hopes of her starting to crawl are coming back. I'm thinking maybe this time it actually won't be too long before she really crawls! She'll be 9 months in 5 days!

Mobility and Another Journal Entry

It's been a few days... Little Chub has reached a few milestones since I last wrote. First being that she enjoys eating solids now. At 7 1/2 months, that's not too surprising, but it seemed kind of sudden. Now, whenever we eat anything, she starts banging her hands around and getting wild, trying to communicate to us that she would like some food too. So, two days ago I bought her her first highchair, the Fisher Price Space Saver Highchair. We love it. She can sit there with us at the table while we eat, playing with her food, and getting a few bites of it down her throat. Right now, she is breastfeeding enough that she doesn't need to eat any solids, but she sure loves to eat with us!

Second, all of a sudden two days ago, Little Chub decided that she wanted to be a little bit more mobile, and now she turns and rolls and squirms all over the place. She still doesn't crawl, and she still doesn't entirely control where she goes, but it seems to have eased at least a little bit of her frustration with being immobile. And for the first time yesterday, as she was struggling to crawl, I saw her push with her legs and pull with her arm simultaneously, which moved her forward about 4 inches! That was the first time she had ever used an arm in an attempt to move herself forward. So, anyway, maybe one of these weeks she'll start crawling. Everybody tells me that I should be enjoying the non-crawling days as much as I can because soon she'll be into everything, but as a first time mom, I can't help but be excited for her to crawl very very soon. It doesn't help that her main source of fussiness is related to not being able to go where she wants and reach the things she wants.

Little Chub also seems to be looking a little less Chubby these days, at least in her legs. While her legs have always had these beautiful fat rolls on the them, they've never been quite at the level of her pudgy little face and belly. I think she'll have chicken legs when she's older...

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Today's new journal entry:

"Sunday March 14, 1993

Marie gave me her phone number on Thursday. It's ###-####. It is very easy to memorize. I just put it in the phone book. Yesterday we went on the Romero Canyon Trail. We didn't go all the way up because it was boring. After that went swimming and mom said Charlene, Sarah, and Lisa could come with us. I ate dinner at Charlene's house last night. I had a mashed potato, two pieces of chicken, and Charlene had my peas. I had half of a grapefruit, and some salted peanuts. We played cards. They were round ones. We played Knock-Knock and War. We had fun. When Charlene's dad was driving me home Charlene gave me about 15 crackers. I finished all seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia. They were very good. They were also very long. We have a lot of oranges and apples. It is getting warmer that's why we can go swimming. After I write in my journal I am going to read Mandie and The Abandoned Mine. It is a mystery. Laura made her pillow into a punching bag. It will be really cool to use."

Crawling

When a baby first starts learning to crawl is such a painful process to watch, not because it actually hurts the baby, but because they are SO CLOSE to reaching something, and your body just aches to nudge them the last two inches to reach their toy. Little Chub has been doing this for about a month now. We know that crawling is just around the corner, but until then...