CRAWLING !

It's official, baby Kat has started crawling. She made her first tentative steps on Saturday night, and now she is (slowly) scooting all around the room getting into everything. At first I don't think she realised the significance of what she was doing. She was just moving from toy to toy without any other purpose. I think to her it was as if the toy got closer to her, rather than she had gotten closer to the toy. But now she understands what she is doing, and will follow me if I leave the room. Of course first she'll cry but then she'll start to follow. Then she'll stop crawling and cry some more.

This new found skill has necessitated some changes on our part. Most importantly the removal of anything that looks like a toy but isn't - i.e. cords and wires, the heater (but only when she's awake, once she goes to bed the heater comes back out and I huddle in front of it again, brrrrr). It has also sparked a major spring clean from about knee level downwards, concentrating on all those little nooks and crannies that aren't noticable to big people but are just the right size for little fingers. Such as underneath the refrigerator. Ugh. Next thing will be to fit kiddy-locks to the cupboard doors, or at least to make sure there's nothing dangerous in the cupboards. Don't want to stifle all her fun by locking everything away.

I'm really proud of Kathleen picking up crawling so quickly. She has been sitting up on her own for ages, and for about a month has been launching herself forward from her sitting position, to be on her hands and knees. However she didn't know what to do then and would get stuck and drop down onto her tummy and cry. She has never really liked "tummy time". The first breakthrough came about two weeks ago when she learnt to roll over from her back to her tummy. I think all this extra tummy time might have been motivation for the second breakthrough about a week later, when she learned to push herself back up to a sitting position from her tummy.

Our little girl is growing up so quickly.

The cats need to watch out now ...


-Megz