One Step Forward Two Steps Back

Amanda is officially mobile. But not necessarily the way you think. Instead of moving forward, she moves backward. It's pretty common for babies to do that, but still funny to watch. You can sit her in front of a bunch of toys, walk away for a bit (no honey, I never walk away from the baby and leave her by herself, I'm just saying that for explanation purposes) and when you come back she's now five feet behind her toys. Generally she can get where she wants to be, it's just slow moving. She uses a combination of rolling and sitting up and rotating around the room until she finds what she's looking for. Occasionally you'll find her stuck under some furniture or in between a few things or even in a corner, but we take care of that quickly because, you know, nobody puts baby in the corner.

Right now she's not moving too quickly, but soon she'll be crawling all over the place. How do I feel about this? Well, from a milestones perspective I'm ecstatic that she's doing what she's doing when she's supposed to be doing it. Sarah didn't crawl until well after her first birthday (I think, I'm too lazy to get up and go look it up), and then continued to miss milestones. Amanda has none of that, so I'm very happy. That's about where my happiness ends. When she starts crawling, she'll be into everything. Andy and Sarah weren't really get into everything kind of kids. Andy because he just took everything in and did everything with such purpose and thought, and Sarah because she couldn't. She was a little more like that when she got older, but you could explain things to her better then.

Amanda isn't like that. She puts anything and everything in her mouth. She is determined to get it into that pie hole. The other day she spit out a small piece of the rug that had been in her mouth. She must have had to pull really hard to get that detached from the rest of the rug. She won't give up. So having her into everything doesn't sound like a lot of fun. We could put gates everywhere, but that's no good for anybody, especially the people who have to climb over the gates all the time.

Of course another reason I don't want her crawling is that it means she's getting bigger. She doesn't need Mommy as much and soon with like Daddy better. I'm telling you, the day is coming. I never should have let him give her a bath last night, I should hog her all to myself. She's my baby, my last baby, I want her to stay that way for awhile. Now I know why my parents still introduce me to people as their baby, even as I get closer and closer to the big 4-0. It's because you never really want to let go of your baby, and you certainly don't want them crawling away.