Apologies for the picture quality. You’d think FlipShare would have a rotate feature in the software.
The two loud thuds are Baby Gabe climbing up on the lower ledge of the nightstand to get to the camera.
Now that Baby Gabe is more mobile, if he wants to find one of us, he just goes crawling from room to room. He’s also normally fine with sitting in his play area with his toys. When we hear music, chimes, or banging, we know he’s doing just fine. When we don’t hear anything, we know he’s up to something. The telltale sign that he’s gotten to a plant is when we hear the normal pitter patter of his hands smacking on the floor as he’s crawling followed by a short pause (he’s probably calculating whether he can get to the plant before we get to him) followed by a frenzied pitter patter as he makes a mad dash to his target. In sprinting parlance, he’s what you’d call a good closer. Once he’s in the home stretch, he picks up his pace dramatically to burst across the finish line.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Baby Gabe is his adaptability. We took him out of day care for the past two weeks because his Ngin-ngin and Yeh-yeh were visiting. We were a little worried he’d be bored at home without his fellow playmates around or be upset with having his daily routine altered. We should have known better. He adapted just fine. That dark spot over his left eye in the photo isn’t a birthmark. It’s a bruise following his faceplant on our hardwood floor. He cried for about 30 seconds until his dad sat him down in front of a mirror so he could play with his reflection. Just like that, injury forgotten. Baby Gabe keeps his happy demeanor in spite of viruses, constipation, and injuries. And for that, we are truly thankful.
Despite the risk of overdoing it on the crawling videos, here’s another one:
After a week, Gabriel has gone from a tentative, uncoordinated crawl (same hand and knee forward) to the sure, coordinated crawl. He’s even maneuvering around blockades we put up to keep him from getting to potted plants, surge protectors, etc. That whole “out of sight, out of mind” theory? Doesn’t work. He knows what’s behind the pillow and just knocks it down to get to those power cords.
He’s actually been crawling for a few days now, but whenever we tried taking a video, he would get distracted by the camera. So then we decided to try having him crawl towards the camera since he likes it so much. He looks like a lion stalking his prey with his quiet, deliberate steps.
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.