We're In Trouble...

...I think our 5 month old is getting ready to crawl!...which, of course, blows my mind.  As if I'm not already struggling enough with him growing up too fast...we started cereal over the weekend...more on that later...and he's getting two teeth...

I remember posting at 5 months that he was scooting by rocking on his belly and pushing with his toes.  Around that same time I noticed that he started pulling his knees under him, with his bootie in the air, while lying on his belly.  Now, at 5 months and 1 week, he's doing 'push-ups' on his hands and toes and is starting to pull his knees under him while pushing up.  A couple of days ago, he managed to get on his hands and knees and pushed with his toes on one foot and bolted forward about 12 inches...much to his surprise as he smashed his face into a toy.

And while this is going on, we're cheering him on, I'm sitting in front of him trying to get him to come to me, we're putting toys out in front of him to try to get him to go to those...and then, in all the excitement, I stop and think, "Oh my goodness!...What is about to happen?...And just why am I encouraging this?" ('cause that's what mommas do, I guess)  **sigh**  Life is about to change for us.

I lied in bed yesterday morning thinking about all the kitchen cabinets that need child locks on them.  (Thank goodness my stepdad, and resident childproofer, is coming in town this week.)  I thought about the bottom shelf in the playroom closet that is full of puzzles and games and books and wondered how many times I will be picking those up?  I thought about how John would come home at our old place and there would be almost no place to walk in the kitchen because Sam had every pot and pan out of the cabinets.  I was grateful we've started putting away Sam's little toys (everything that fits in a toilet paper tube) under the guise of "You have too many toys and complain when you have to pick them up," instead of having to do it "because your brother...".  And I felt sorry for the kid because he's going to have to learn to crawl on hard floors.

This is all very different than Sam...
Sam learned to roll, and then used that as his method of travel for a while.  I would walk out of a room for a minute and come back and not see Sam, only to find he'd rolled under a table or the swing or across the room.  Then he learned to sit and started 'army crawling'.  He learned to crawl by lunging forward to his hands and knees from a sitting position.  He'd get to his hands and knees and rock, and then started crawling.  But that wasn't until between 8 and 9 months.

Ben can't even sit up unassisted yet.  And when I do sit him up he just hunches over trying to get his mouth on whatever's in front of him which looks painful and hard on the diaphragm so we don't work on sitting much.  I guess he spends most of his time on his belly watching Sam, and us (sometimes), and playing with his favorite toy.  And that probably explains these early scooting/push up skills.  And the fact that I think he's determined to keep up with his brother, sooner rather than later.

Learning to Crawl from JDS on Vimeo.