One Must Learn To Crawl Before...Never Mind

I am not the kind of person who does well to follow a list of instructions in the order required. Instead, I tend to jump around to the steps that I find the most interesting, and complete those first. This is why I am terrible at baking.

My daughter seems to have inherited this ability from me.

Some time between six and seven months of age, my daughter started propping herself up in the crawling position, so we assumed she would start crawling soon. Since she had figured out how to roll from her tummy to her back at three weeks, I thought that she would crawl early as well.

By the eight month mark, she still hadn't started crawling and didn't seem to have made much progress. As other babies born around the same time as our daughter were starting to crawl with ease, we started to wonder whether there was something we should be doing to help her learn (or even something we were doing wrong!)

By nine months, she had developed a method of locomotion that can only be described as being the same method that chimpanzees use to move about their pens at the zoo. It was a combination of rolling, scooting, and spinning. It was odd, but it got her where she wanted to be and it seemed to make her happy.

At that point I tried to tell myself that she was a savant and had figured out a new way to move on her own, but in shameful secret I started wondering if something was "wrong" with her. Why hadn't she figured out how to crawl yet? Would she ever crawl?

As the days of crawlessness went on, my wife gave me yet another parental factoid that I had never heard previosuly: Apparently, some babies walk before they crawl.

At the time I thought she was just trying to make me feel better, but as I told "The Story of the Scooting Baby" to more people, they also confirmed what my wife had said and told me stories of their own "late crawlers" who had suddenly pulled themselves up and started walking before ever crawling.

So, since my daughter seemed to be bored with learning how to crawl (since her own method was more fun) I decided to test the theory, and my wife and I started propping her up on things in the standing position to strengthen her legs and ready her for walking.

Usually, I would prop her up on the couch while I was sitting on it, which she seemed to enjoy. She would stand, happily smacking her hand against the cushions, and picking her feet up, although they never went anywhere.

One day, while she was propped up on the couch, wiggling around and stamping her feet, I realized that she was farther away from where I had initially set her down. After picking her up and placing her in between my knees, I watched as she maneuvered her way around my knees and to the couch cushion on the other side.

Did she just start walking?

I got off the couch and watched her, to see that she was picking up her feet and moving them to the left, then moving her upper body with her arms! She was walking! (kind of)

A few weeks later, with the same knack for completing steps in the wrong order as her father, she figured out how to pull herself up onto objects by herself. A few days after that, she figured out how to crawl (properly) too.

So, maybe my daughter didn't figure out how to crawl/walk by the traditional order of things, but at least she is mobile enough to chase her friends around at daycare.

Now, time to finish the baby proofing!