The Accidental Crawl, and other Jack Phenomena

 

Every day is an adventure with Jack, yet I very rarely update this blog. I have to make it a point to do so more often.

A couple weeks ago, Jack was laying on his tummy on the couch next to a pile of broken glass and beneath a piano suspended from the ceiling. Gina and I were at the movies, but we left the house windows open a crack to make sure Jack would be comfortable.

Well, most of that’s not true. He was laying on his tummy though. The rest of that last paragraph was just plain silly.

Anyway, he was lying on his tummy and started trying to move forward in a crawl-like fashion. I gave him support to push off of, and he made good progress. We repositioned his body a bit, and he did better.

So why did I call it “The Accidental Crawl”? I’m not convinced that his intention was to crawl. I think he was trying to get off his tummy and into a seated position and the result of the effort was the crawl like motion. Whether my understanding of the event is accurate or not, we have taken it as a sign that it is time to get this baby moving.

We no longer bring the food to him. We put it several feet away and encourage him to go get it. Sometimes it takes 6 or more hours, but he is relentless in his pursuit. Even if we leave him there to go to bed, when we wake up the next day, he’s still at it.

There I go again. Disregard that last paragraph. We have done nothing of the sort. That would be just plain bad parenting. What we really do is lay him on his tummy a few times a day and encourage him to go after a toy. I give his feet some support and he does push off. If he really wants the toy, forward he goes. Other times, he’s just not interested and chooses to eat his hands instead.

I believe that the crawling is coming soon. Jack, over the last few weeks, has taken a great interest in his body parts and the objects around him. Not too long ago he discovered his feet. Now, just a short time later, he plays with them constantly and has tendency to jam them into his mouth. We make a point of his leaving his legs uncovered because he enjoys them so much.

As Judy pointed out, he is obtaining finger control. Rather than reaching for things with his entire hand in a brute force approach, he will reach for things (such as a cookie) with his thumb and index finger.

He enjoys pulling Gina’s head hair and my arm hair. He’s perfectly comfortable reaching into my mouth and pulling on my cheeks and lips. Earlier, he was trying to crush my larynx with is his super baby strength.

He’s into yelling now. He has a high-pitched screech which he has mastered. He doesn’t do it because he’s unhappy; he does it because he can. He’s discovering his voice and throwing it about.

He also is fond of that Spltttttt!!!! thing you do with your lips. I don’t know how to describe it, so hopefully its self explanatory. He discovered it, did it a lot, then stopped. We were at BestBuy last week and he started again out of the blue. Its especially fun when he does it with a mouthful of food.

He’s now combining his talents in bursts. He does the old spltttt and yelling all at once.

His full-on giggle reflex hasn’t engaged yet. We can make him chuckle, but its rare that we really get him to laugh. The last major episode was the previously documented PEEK-A-BOO incident.

And boy, this kid can sleep. Jack will be 6 months old next week. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that he has been sleeping through the night for at least 3 or 4 months. Gina feeds him between 9 and 10. He goes to bed. Then he wakes up between 8 and 9 in the morning. Sometimes he’ll wake up a littler earlier, I give him his pacifier, and then he sleeps again until about 9. (9 is the target number for me. I get up at the last possible moment. Jack understands this and is happy to accommodate). We were talking to a woman at lunch today; her son is 7 months old and he just slept through the night for the first time this week. We are extremely spoiled in that regard.

He’s eating lots of different foods now. Gina makes most of it using a machine she bought for that purpose: Sweet Potatoes, Squash, Green Beans, Carrots and most recently, Peas. He also has some fruits, but we buy an organic brand of those: pears and applesauce. Sometimes we mix in some banana with his morning oatmeal.

He’s really getting into the toys. Early on, he wasn’t really interested in any of the toys. We tried other toys and found what he likes. Now, we’re going back and revisiting some of the original toys, and he appreciates them a lot more. He has a saucer that he sits into play. There are a bunch of activities on it. He now plays with all of them.

He also has a walker, which a lot of people (including the pediatrician) don’t like. They say the two main problems with it are the tip-over potential, and foot damage. Of course, we didn’t know about that until after we bought it, so we had to rethink it. After heavy scrutiny, we continue to let him use it. He really likes it. He is always supervised, and is never in it for long. His feet lay flat on the ground so he doesn’t try to move abnormally. He likes the activities on it, and he likes to push himself backwards. He hasn’t discovered forwards yet. To us, its just another toy. Its not a baby sitter. Besides, we live in a one story. There isn’t anything to fall off of.

Exercising the same diligence, we also reconsidered our stance on the power saw toy that we found at a yard sale. In that case, we agree with the critics and discarded it.