Baby Gabe has taken this crawling business to a whole new level, and it’s driving both him and his parents to exhaustion. Lately, he’s been sleepcrawling. We would wake up to him whimpering and find him on his stomach with his head up against the bumper at the top of his crib. He’s crying because he can’t go any farther. The craziest thing is that he’s still asleep and doesn’t wake up until we turn him over and move him back down to the middle of the crib. Last night, he figured 3:30 AM was as good a time as any to get back to crawling. His poor mom had to put him on the mat as he rolled and crawled around for a good 30 minutes before he got it out of his system and could fall back asleep. She thinks this is karma. When Baby Gabe’s mom was a baby, she would wake up and want to play at 3 or 4 AM, and it drove her mom nuts.
We sometimes call Gabriel “Little Quack” after the title character in “Little Quack’s Bedtime.” But some friends noticed his resembalnce to this Japanese anime character.
Baby Gabe is just starting to crawl. He’s not coordinated enough yet to use his arms in conjunction with his legs, and he uses his face for support. Right now he crawls the way his dad swims — a whole lot of flailing around with not a whole lot of forward movement. But he’s trying.
These past two weeks, Baby Gabe has really taken to looking at himself in the mirror. Just a few weeks ago, he couldn’t have cared less. Now he recognizes himself and keeps himself occupied playing on his mat at the foot of our mirrored sliding door closet in the office.
Baby Gabe hated baths. All the books and magazines and websites we read said that babies love bathtime and that a bath was a relaxing way to start winding down for the night. But Gabriel wouldn’t have any of that. If anything, bathtime worked him up to a good cry. So then his A-ma watched us give him a bath and suggested we shampoo him first in the sink salon-style, wash his face, and then put him in the tub. This was sage advice passed down from her mother, Gabriel’s A-tsoh, who bathed all her children like that. This ran counter to everything we’ve read — conventional wisdom being that shampoo might get in the baby’s eyes causing him to cry, and you wouldn’t want to start bathtime like that. We gave A-ma’s and A-tsoh’s method a try. No more crying. Score one for oral tradition. Thanks A-tsoh and A-ma!
On the one hand, it sure beats waking up crying; but on the other, it might be cause for concern. There have been times we’ve left him in the middle of our bed (he’ll nap anywhere except his crib, which he associates with night-time sleeping) and come back in an hour or two later to find him rolling around right at the edge. We’ve had to construct barriers to restrict his movement. We’ll need to get a playpen once he starts crawling.
Gabriel met his cousins for the first time on this last trip to Ohio. Jon and Angelina made the 4-hour car trip up north with 20-month-old Taylor and 6-month-old Ethan. We got a lot of great advice and good product recommendations from them, and Gabriel finally got the chance to relate to people closer to his age. He was definitely fascinated, often staring in wide-eyed amazement at these other tiny people. Many more pictures are in Monica’s Picasa web album in the More Photos link above.
