I tried to teach Jack how to crawl today. Turns out, I’m pretty good at it. Not so much the teaching, but the crawling. He seems to watch everything I do so intently, that I figured if he saw me crawling around the house, maybe something would click in his brain, and he’d figure it out. So, that’s what I did today, I crawled. I crawled from the couch to the stereo. I crawled from the kitchen to the dining room table. I even crawled to the bathroom. I crawled towards him, I crawled away from him, and I crawled back. Unfortunately, that was the only crawling that happened, though not from lack of trying on either of our parts.
He wants to be mobile, you can see it in his face. He can raise himself up with his arms. He can also bend and move his legs. He just can’t seem to realize that he needs to do both at the same time. Instead, he stretches his arms out in front of himself, balancing on his belly, and kicks his legs in unison. It’s like he’s swimming on land; cute but futile. I’d love to toss him into a pool and see what happens. Lucky for him, it’s practically winter, and we didn’t bring Julie’s kiddie pool with us from Illinois.
I do wonder if all this crawling around will actually have any effect. When he does finally make his move, will he be thinking about me crawling around the house on this random Monday afternoon? How much of his watching will actually become doing? When I catch him staring at me while doing the mundane activities of my life, what is he thinking? What is he learning? It’s a frightening responsibility, but I’m ready for it…and I have the rug burns on my knees to prove it.