Learning to Crawl

Crawling is a major milestone for the boys. It marks the point where they transition from newborns to babies, from totally helpless to mostly helpless. They’ll be able to grab toys and other objects that I haphazardly left strewn about the floor, assuming Abbie doesn’t snatch them away in a jealous fit. Plus I won’t be able to blindly turn my back on them to rush into the kitchen and determine what implement will best clean up whatever Abbie just knocked on the floor.

Ian is close to crawling, much closer than your average Cubs starting pitcher is to playing a full injury-free season. He can assume the crawling position, pushing up on all fours with his head craned up looking for objects of interest like toys or pets careening through the house. He just hasn’t quite figured out how to move his limbs from that position. He’ll rock back and forth and maybe poke one appendage forward a tad for a minute before he gets bored, tired, or both and collapses back to the floor too often into a puddle of spit up he emitted while working so hard. If I squint my eyes, tilt my head, and use my imagination, I can see him move an arm and leg on opposite sides in correct succession, but it’s nothing I’m ready to write down as a First in this baby book known as a blog.

Tory on the other hand is about as close to crawling as the Cubs are to a pennant. He can assume the crawling position, but not well or for long. With about 20% more body weight than his brother, his muscles have to work a lot hard to get off the ground. Plus even when he develops the coordination to correctly move his limbs, he’ll have to deal with that milk gut dragging on the ground.

While Ian is busy trying to figure out how to crawl, Tory is content to commando crawl to whatever interests him. He’s adept at progressively kicking his legs while flailing his arms to scoot across the carpet, grasping whatever interests him as he drags and probably ruins the tummy of his outfit. Ian will commando crawl too, but Tory seems to realize that he’ll have to limit his weight gain or exercise more to lift his body for crawling, so why bother trying to learn? They already possess a disturbing amount of mobility through the commando crawl, something I discovered after setting them down, checking on Abbie, and returning to find them facing a completely different direction with an expression that says “now what do I do?”

As they scoot about the room, I’m learning about their likes and dislikes based on what they grab. For example, they dislike anything I give them to play with that cost money or is safe to chew on. They like paper, specifically the newspapers I leave on the ground after desperately trying to finish reading them before they dump a new one at my door. I’ll occasionally find one of them rolling on the ground with a newspaper wrapped around him and a mirror image of Garfield transferred onto his face. They like other kinds of paper too, like that phonebook I found Ian sucking on the other day.

They also like grabbing people. Sometimes that means clutching Abbie’s foot while she’s innocently sitting and trying to con me into reading to her; sometimes it means munching on whatever brother’s body part happens to be closest. I’ve found them chewing on the other’s foot or hand. Occasionally they’ll latch onto the other’s face, which really ticks off the gropee. Ian had a meltdown yesterday after Tory inserted his hand in his brother’s mouth and raked. At least that’s what I think set him off since that’s the position they were in when I rushed in from the kitchen after sweeping up the formula powder Abbie knocked on the floor.