Greetings to everyone!

Last weekend (the 22nd/23rd) Xavier figured it out! Knee forward, hand forward, other knee forward, other hand forward then repeat.

It began a few days prior. Through normal changing operations, it became necessary to change the top sheet, a form-fitting sheet which covers the pad. The pad itself, without the sheet, is covered in a vinyl casing. It's the vinyl casing which, we think, launched Xavier into the crawling world.

As mentioned in a prior post, Xavier often grows bored waiting for his diaper to be swapped out (his boredom often sets in before the process gets started). In his boredom, he flips over onto his tummy and presses up with his arms, usually all in one smooth motion. Seeing the bucket of changing supplies, or a pile of clean socks or a tube of zinc oxide paste, he will drag himself toward the item of interest. However, the changing pad is too narrow for him to roll and rock his way to the item; also, the pad is concave and the sides work against his (until now) skills at moving around.

Take away the top sheet, and hello vinyl! It is slippery enough so as not to hinder his thrashing to move forward, but not so slippery as to keep him thrashing in place. Like a frog swimming in water, he would work himself up to the place where he could grab hold of the sock or tube of zinc oxide. Watching how adeptly he could cross the length of the pad in this way got Rebecca and me to thinking.

After changing his diaper, we started placing Xavier at the far end of the pad. We set him on his hands and knees and faced him toward the supply bucket, then turned him loose! He needed no other prodding; generally he had his arms and legs in motion before setting him on the pad. Up the pad he would crawl, perfecting his frog-swim technique of crawling with every lap.

Only a couple of days of this, then the light bulb went on! Putting him on the floor he used his frog-crawl means to vastly and expediently expand his roaming range. Lena, the Dalmatian, is not too happy about this as she is his favorite thing to chase around the room.

After a week of the frog-crawl, which had him crawling not on his knees, but on his thighs, he figured out getting his knees underneath him allows him to catch up with Lena all the faster. Now, when we change his diaper, we see red knees from all their use.

He still reverts back to his roll-across-the-floor technique when he grows tired or fatigued. It usually goes in a progression from slightly uncoordinated crawling on his knees to frog-crawling on his thighs to flopping over and rolling. With each day, his (proper) crawling endurance grows. We, his parents, are both excited and harried by this (seemingly) so sudden a change. Xavier doesn't seem to have the same hangups as his parents; he's after the dog, and when she is outside where it is safe, he heads for the dog food bowl and the dog's water bowl. One or the other, sometimes both, he likes to tip over, then look at his reflection in the bottom of the bowls.

Hello to everyone.

As mentioned in yesterday's post, Xavier needed a bath after his encounter with carrots puree.

Someone Rebecca knows posted on Facebook a brilliant idea: submerge a laundry basket in a bathtub of water and use it as a baby tub. As stated, this is a brilliant idea, and we had a Xavier-sized basket.

Still covered in carrot puree, Xavier looks up at Mom. Holding a look of concern, perhaps he wonders if he indulged too much in the carrot dish.

At last he notices Dad with camera.

Deciding he likes the water, he discovers the bubbles and several bath toys. We had some trouble with him tipping over. His bottom would slide along the bottom of the basket, as it was too smooth for him. Rebecca placed a cut of shelf liner under him (a corner of it can be seen just under the yellow crab toy). Problem solved!

Greetings to you all.

Xavier experimented with his first pureed food tonight: carrots. We let him self-feed, handing him a spoon and a glob of carrot puree. How much he actually swallowed is unknown, but he got quite a bit in his mouth. At one point he made a face which suggested he did not like the taste.

After a while, he grew bored with the spoon. Once he had coated every part of it with carrot, he tossed it to the floor. He advanced to finger painting, then to carrot pies, then to splashing. At one point he found a tiny lump of carrot which required him to pick it up on his fingertip for a careful and intense examination. Every so often he would press his fingers into his mouth and suck them clean.

After this course he needed a bath, but that is another tale.

Hello to everyone.

Xavier's inquisitiveness is directing him to explore more and more things. His being much more mobile now has made us examine the house for "dangers" at his level of reach. Already he has shown us he can remove dresser drawers with a single push, and adjust the volume on the surround sound system.

Now, we have these all over the house.

Apparently, the sockets call to him, like a siren's sonnet. "What might these slots be? And what is this bigger hole my finger easily fits into?" He has swung doors out of the way to gain access to them.

Greetings to everyone.

Xavier has grown strong enough and wiggly enough to make diaper changes difficult should he decide to become active during the process. Fortunately, he goes active about one time in three, rather than three times in three.

As soon as the diaper is loosed, even if his feet and legs are held up in the air, he will flip over to his stomach. Once on his stomach, he'll reach for and grab anything he can. If the attending parent is not careful and lets him escape before "the cleaning," things can get messy.

A couple of days back, Xavier filled his diaper with Herculean effort. As soon as the diaper was free of him, he took his first stab at self-cleaning. Wondering what his hand just scooped, he proceeded to investigate with his fingers while Dad was working to get the overflowing diaper into the trash without staining the carpet.

During this two seconds, Xavier grew bored and instantly moved to count his toes. After all, he hasn't seen them all night. Want to guess which hand pulled his foot toward his face?

So, now it's an emergency! Forget wiping his little bum, the underlying clean diaper may need replacing, but that's less work than bathing a baby and wiping down walls and flat surfaces. After that hand! Xavier giggles and thinks it's a game. To make it more of a challenge (Xavier doesn't do anything half way), he decided to change the rules. However, Xavier is not yet faster than Daddy, and that hand got cleaned before it could do any more mischief!

With clean hand, and now a clean bum, Xavier's hand found another item to explore. Fortunately, that anatomical item was cleaned before the hand found it.

As parents, it's a rite of passage to take the required "baby butt shot" photograph. We finally initiated into that rite, and when Xavier is a teenager with a serious girl friend... Well, some payback for being so squirmy at diaper changes.

Greetings to everyone.

Xavier has become very mobile, though crawling still eludes him. We can no longer leave him on the floor in his room without supervision. Rebecca walked in and found him along his dresser, where he had managed to pull the bottom drawer out, and was able to press the drawer up to overcome the safety catch. He had the drawer poised over himself and ready to drop.

Placing him on the floor, especially when he is "feeling his formula," he will motor all over the place. He can be set down, and within seconds he is several feet away from where he started. It is amazing how fast he can get away at nine months!

He was on his floor mat tonight playing with one of several small toys while Rebecca and I watched a TV show. He started rolling around; Rebecca and I commented on his mobility. Within two sentences he found his way over to the TV stand and began playing with the DVD player, which rests on the bottom shelf. My hopes of not having to child-proof the house for items below the two-foot line for another few months were dashed by a dose of Xavier reality!

Xavier is so close to crawling it hurts. His primary mode of movement is to roll, then popup as in the picture above, adjust his angle and roll again. On a smooth floor, like the engineered wood room with the TV, Xavier will press up like above and push himself backward. As if he wasn't fast enough at rolling, he can really move on a smooth surface!

"Victory is mine!" Not only is Xavier a shameless flirt with people, and with Mom, who is taking his picture, he also is not camera shy. Apart from chasing his mother across the room, his "smart bell" is what he was after.

Hello to everyone.

One of the many surprises Rebecca arranged for my 50th birthday was a visit from my good friend (and Best Man) Andy, or Uncle Andy as we have introduced him to Xavier. It was Andy's first visit since Xavier was delivered, and he came bearing gifts.

Here, before he really got messy, Xavier attempts using the silver spoon Andy brought, a gift Andy's mother sent via him.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Xavier—armed with his spoon—was introduced to cereal. Digging in, he covered himself, his high chair table surface, the high chair seat and back, his clothing and some of the floor with cereal. It's amazing how far he managed to spread a tablespoon of formula-soaked cereal! We think the only thing safe from the cereal barrage was Xavier's stomach; he has not figured out the whole swallow thing when a bottle is not involved.

Greetings to everyone.

Last weekend Rebecca threw a surprise party for my 50th birthday and these balloons were part of the decorations. Xavier has been fascinated by them all week as they floated high near the ceiling. Today, he figured out how to get them down to his level: grab the strings (which was within arm's reach), roll several times to spool the stings around torso, then declare victory. (Of course, this was done in a fully supervised environment, though it saddens me I need to insert such a disclaimer)

Once Xavier declared victory, he became frustrated. He could not hold the balloon in his mouth or get a good taste of it, so he beat the bad balloon repeatedly.