30 Things in 30 Days: Thing #30—Learn to Crawl

Note David's hand gripping the back of her onesie. Now that she can crawl, she refuses to sit still.

Well, folks, we're 30 for 30. I can't believe we did it. Thirty awesome things in 30 days. Today David said, "Let's just keep doing awesome things. But...without the pressure of blogging about it every day." 30 Things started as something like a joke that I brought up to David while we were in the car, and he jumped on the idea and said we must do it. And I have to admit it has been something of a life-changer for me. Life-adjuster at the very least. It is not a bad way to live a life: to wake up and ask yourself what awesome thing you are going to accomplish with your family that day. Even if it is just a quiet evening at home.

In any case, today Hollie took a turn for choosing awesomeness. She crawled.

We love our Little Bean so much it hurts. We are so in love with her. I'm proud of her for choosing today—the 30th of 30 days—to reach her biggest milestone yet. (Don't you think her eyes look green?)

She's crawled earlier this week—one or two crawls this way, one or two that way. But never more than a couple of feet at a time. But today, she was on the move. She crawled from one end of the living room to the other, finding Mom's books, Dad's records, and the basket where we hide the rest of her toys next to the couch. She crawled down the hallway; she crawled into her room. She pulled out the drawer that we keep her nighttime diapers in, and she played with one of these diapers for about twenty minutes, without ever even putting it in her mouth. She is so happy.

She still wants David or me to help her stand up and walk around whenever we are sitting (or lying down—crawling babies make you sleepy!) anywhere near her, but she is much more content to play by herself now that she knows that she's mobile. We found out today that we can no longer leave bags of groceries on the ground, and we really need to figure out what to do with every bottom shelf in the house. David is leaving to grade AP English tests in Kentucky for a week and a half this Friday, so I will likely spend the week following Little Miss Busy around and making a list of all the places we need to baby-proof.

Anyway, here is video evidence of Hollie's crawling. It is two minutes long plus change—viewer beware. I thought about trimming it, but I like how the full video documents Hollie's persistence. I think my mom in particular will want to see this baby not giving up. I'm so proud of my little scamp. (Now if I could just figure out how to keep her from tearing apart all of our books until I know where to move them all!)



A quick note on that yellow ball: it was a new toy today, and I think she understands how special it is to actually be able to hold it without it slipping away (think Harry Potter and golden snitches, maybe). She was so pleased at finally grabbing it, that she refused to let go of it, even after she got ready for bed. She fell asleep with it in her fist. I about cried, it was so cute.

P.S. The other awesome thing we did was have David open his birthday present: a SuperNintendo (our SNES was lost over Christmas break in some boxes that never reached our house). The question blocks were filled with cheap game cartridges I won on eBay. Although we are always trying to make better use of our time in general, it sure was fun to play old video games with David today (and Hollie is really, really, really interested in touching the controllers, too. Fortunately, I gave them all a good wash down with some Clorox wipes before wrapping them up).

It was a little ridiculous to spend so much time on just wrapping presents, and I thought David would make fun of me. Instead, he took it as a challenge to wrap future presents even more creatively. I'm just glad I didn't pull down the light fixture by hanging tissue boxes full of game cartridges from them.

David gives a question-box present a good Mario "sproing! sproing!"