Crawling at a Snail's Pace

If there weren't already a thousand other reasons to know that Abby is definitely our daughter, her "slow by little" approach to...well, I guess just certain things, is definitely one of them.  For example, after starting to teeth at around four or five months, Abby was over eleven months old before poking through those first two teeth.  To be fair, though, she has no control over how fast her teeth come in.  If she did, I'm sure she would have them in faster so we might give her apple slices and tortilla chips.

What she has taken her time with, is crawling.  We've watched our friends' babies, three and four months younger than her, start scooting right past her, while Abby sat like a lump. She's aging out of her class at My Gym, but I'm keeping it on the down-low.  How can she go on to the next class when half the kids in this class are crawling or even walking, and Abby is still just a world-class reacher?  It really is kind of amazing how far she can reach - Kevin and I swear she has "Go-Go-Gadget" arms, and she can fold herself in half to reach something she wants.  Or, if she can't reach it, you can almost see her thinking, "Oh well," as she decides to play with something else, like her pant legs.  Our pediatrician actually suggested that Abby might just be lazy, and we couldn't disagree.

We weren't particularly worried.  Crawling is actually not an "official" developmental milestone, and the age-range for first steps is up to 18 months.  Kevin has probably been a little more anxious to get her moving than I have been - he won't have to chase around the house once she gets going!  But, on the other hand, that baby is getting heavy, and it might be nice to not have to carry her everywhere.

We've followed the pediatrician's advice to "leave her own defenses" (I think she meant "devices") when playing, so she'd be forced to get things on her own.  Another friend was advised to keep her kiddo on his knees as much as possible, so we've been doing that, too.  And maybe it all paid off, or maybe she would've crawled for the first time on Valentine's Day, anyway.

I always thought it would be our cat or the iPhone that motivated her to crawl for the first time, but it was her books!  I think she may be more of the bookworm type, anyway.

With her Great Grandma at Christmas.