Scooter

Jonah is officially crawling, if you define crawling as moving on the floor toward a designated location. If it were an Olympic sport, he definitely would lose points for form, but he gets where he wants to go.

He began his illustrious career in ground-level mobility by first hitching or rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, a frequent activity for about a month. Then within the last week or two, he's started actually pulling himself places -- not so much with the help of his legs, but mostly just by reaching his arms outward and grabbing whatever he could for leverage.

Now he's using his knees, or at least one of them, to help him scoot. Imagine a soldier in boot camp, doing a belly crawl under some low wires. That's what Jonah looks like, in miniature. And in fact he sometimes looks like an injured soldier; for whatever reason, on Saturday while I was watching him crawl, he decided to reach his right arm out, hold his left arm pinned under him, and use his left knee to push forward. I was amazed that he didn't push himself in circles, but he finally got his toy (the frequent motivation for his motion).

Jonah is also adept at going from a lying down position (on belly or back) to sitting up, a factor that led us to lower his crib mattress last week. And, this weekend he had his first real solid foods: well-cooked (but not pureed) broccoli, which he proceeded to get on his eyebrows, chin, cheeks, nose, ears, and hair (he was a bit tired). Foreshadowing of his first birthday and a reminder of Noah's; I think we'll have to make sure he has cake well before naptime.