Locomotion

Big Al has finally figured out why we wanted him to learn to crawl and what all of this walking nonsense is about. You can see him looking at things in the distance and trying to figure out how best to get over there to get it. He knows there is a way, but sometimes the execution is off as when he got his head stuck under the coffee table. Tonight he kept going backwards and becoming increasingly frustrated at being farther and farther away from his goal. A lot of times we have to help him get himself up and prompt him to take steps or whatever, but, left to his own devices, he can do it himself -- he can do more than we realize. This morning, for instance, Jay was off doing the grocery shopping (God bless him for that) and Griff was in the nursery in the pack-n-play asleep. Allan and I were practicing walking with the activity table which he love, love, loves to do. We had practiced pulling up to his knees from sitting and then pushing on up in to walking. We had been doing it for about 10 minutes when Griffith woke up and howled. Now, Griff had not had enough of a nap to be through so I sat Allan down on his bottom next to the table and headed in to try to calm the beast. I was gone maybe ten minutes, rocking and soothing Griff when I heard Allan's alarm going off. So I had to head back in the living room. Allan had managed to get himself up on his knees and was balancing on the table. He was apparently holding his breath from all of the effort which is why the alarm went off. But he did it all his own self.

Tonight Allan worked his way around in a circle on his bottom to get around to a toy that was too far behind for him to just turn and reach. Like I said, he is really starting to get the idea.