Crawling ... sort of

Last weekend Elizabeth finally decided to give crawling a try. She was trying to stand up on her own from sitting position -- put her hands down on the floor, straightened legs, on all fours -- but propelled herself forward instead and realized she could crawl! But crawling is still her second preference to walking. Crawling is a means to move herself towards a place where she can pull up, stand and walk by holding on to something. If there is something across the room that she wants, instead of crawling directly over to it, she'll crawl to the nearest object (chair, wall, furniture, etc.), pull herself up, and figure out a way to walk to the object by holding on to something, of course.

Last Sunday, Mother's Day, she was trying to crawl and fell face forward on the hardwood floor. Poor little thing had a boo boo - her top teeth cut the inside of her top lip. There was so much blood that we thought she had lost a tooth in the incident. Ed had to help hold her down so I could put an icy paper towel on the cut to slow the bleeding. Ed turned out the "Little Red" music video she loves so much, and that quieted her down. We watched it over and over so she would stay calm while we got the bleeding under control.

This morning she cruised around the bottom floor of the house all by herself. She held onto walls, furniture, whatever she could to make her way through the rooms. Ed and I had a hard time keeping up with where she had moved. One minute she's in the living room, the next minute she's in the kitchen pulling out all the items from her bag and scattering them all over the floor. She had a ball.

Elizabeth's taken a few unassisted steps at a time. She's just working up the courage to completely let go!