Mobility Takes on a Whole New Level
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.