This week bubby learnt a new trick – she’s crawling!
I’m very excited about this because for the past few weeks she has been wanting to crawl and getting really frustrated that she couldn’t quite make it happen! She would get up on all fours for a few seconds, then she’d get stuck, fall down and cry, which was really distressing to watch. Then slowly she started to take a few small crawling steps. Now after about a week of practicing, she is on fire. Nothing can stop her.
Doesn’t it just change your whole world when they start moving?
I think I’ve lost about two productive hours out of every day. There’s about two or three months of heavenly bliss when your baby learns to sit up, but they can’t yet move. You can pop them on their play-mat with a couple of toys (or even better a cereal box or an empty milk bottle) and they’ll sit and play quite contentedly while you potter around them, cooking or cleaning up. Those days are over! Now I have to be on high-alert every minute because bubby is on the move.
Have you ever had that moment where you’ve turned your back for half a minute, then turned around again and your baby is nowhere to be seen?
That’s happening to me about five times a day now. One minute she’s there. Then I go answer the phone or make a cup of tea and suddenly she’s Missing In Action. Somehow in that thirty seconds she’s squeezed herself into the tiniest hiding space available, like under a dining chair or behind a door. Otherwise she’s made a beeline for the grottiest, most disgusting thing in the house and started licking it. I don’t know what it is about the bin or the dustpan or the mop-head that makes a baby want to put it inside their mouth! I mean once you’ve tasted the dust-pan, why would you want to go back and taste it again? And once you’ve eaten one snotty tissue out of the wastepaper basket, why would you go back for seconds? I’ll never forget the time I turned around to see Birdy pulling the legs off a dead cockroach – that image is etched into my brain forever.
It’s not just grotty things that babies go for, they’re also inexplicably drawn to anything electronic or dangerous. What is so appealing about an i-phone charger?
Not only is it dangerous because of the electricity, but it’s also a perfect strangling hazard. So of course she makes a dash for it again and again! Then there’s the breakable hazards – glass lamps, glass photo frames, wine bottles – all the choking hazards we have lying around the house – little Polly pocket toys, those stupid little Kinder surprise toys, hair clips, five cent coins – there’s all the poisons she could drink or eat – hand creams, medicines, dishwashing liquid, cleaning products – all the things that could suffocate her – like plastic bags and glad wrap and the strangling hazards like curtain chords, skipping ropes, belts and necklaces! It feels like the whole house is booby-trapped and I spend my entire day pulling things out of her mouth!
I’m going to have to start baby-proofing the house, moving things up high, putting in those annoying cupboard locks and baby gates.
I haven’t really got to that yet, but one thing the crawling has forced me to do is keep the house a little cleaner! I have admitted on this blog before that I’m not the best housekeeper, and I have to confess that I put off doing jobs I don’t like, such as mopping and vacuuming. But it’s a little embarrassing when your baby ends up with huge black stains all over her knees and her bottom because the floor is so gross! So if nothing else, Molly’s newfound skill has forced me to break out the mop and the vacuum a little more often, which I’m sure my husband will be very pleased about!
Do you remember what it was like when your baby started moving? How did it change your life and routine?
From Mouths of Babes 