not crawling.

I wish I could say that J was crawling. Actually, wait, no, wow, I take that back. I'm happy for him to remain immobile for a little longer -- long enough for my back to stop aching from my latest strain, long enough so that we don't have to fully babyproof this apartment, as long as he wants, really. I'm not one of THOSE parents, the parents who see that Trixie could crawl by this age and get competitive. No, I'm happy with his daily workouts and his weekly sessions at Gymboree.

In the meantime, we've spent a few weeks down on the floor, J up on his hands and knees, rocking forward and backward, and then plopping down onto his belly and waving his hands and feet like an Olympic breaststroker. Heh, breaststroker's probably not the word they use. Anyway, this amount of movement is spectacular to witness from a tiny person who just recently was known as The Blob. It doesn't hurt that it is occasionally punctuated with this sound: heyYA heyYA heyYA as he rocks to and fro, and then what can only be described as the exact opposite of a manly, guttural, hearty scream; it is a sound so ear piercing and urgent that telephone conversations around here are regularly interrupted with, "Um, do you need to go?" "No, believe it or not, that's a happy noise."

The real reason I'm not worried is because everyone who witnesses this behavior tells us, "Oh, just put a toy he really wants in front of him, and he'll be crawling in no time." Just for humor's sake, again, not because I am in ANY kind of rush for him to be even more underfooot than he already is, we try this every so often. (Also because my parenting philosophy, it turns out, owes a lot to the "just for humor's sake" way of life.) Does he crawl? No. He does everything but. Does he get the toy? Oh, yes. He strains, he farts, he rolls, he squeals, he commences the up and down crawl-attempt routine, he smiles, and then he reach-reach-reaches, a reaching I can only describe as the reach you would perform if you'd just been poisoned and the antidote sat just beyond your fingertips as your assailant stood on your back in heavy boots, and I actually believe that it is through this reaching that he has grown to the height of a sixteen-month-old.

Sometimes the up-and-down routine results in backward movement, much to J's chagrin. This usually results in his backing up into a corner, or under the coffee table. I'm not sure why he so enjoys being under the coffee table, but he'll stay there for 15 minutes or so, happy as a clam. Sometimes he chews on the leg of the table, sometimes he just lies on his back and looks up at the underside, and sometimes he just lounges around.

So, for now, no, he isn't crawling, yet somehow he's still managing to kick my ass.