Crawling

I’ve mentioned before that Edith hates tummy time and has little interest in crawling. The former is still true, but in the past 24 hours she has become suddenly determined to crawl. Babies are supposed to learn to roll over from their stomachs to their backs first, and then later, the other way around.

Edith, always contrary, has done the exact opposite. She rolled from her back to her tummy about a month ago, and had a phase where she was doing it a lot, so I had to stop swadding her at night, but then she stopped and she hasn’t really been interested in rolling since.

But today, she suddenly began constantly flipping herself onto her stomach and trying her damnedest to crawl across the floor. She didn’t manage it. She tries to pull with her little hands, but she can’t get traction, nor does she have the upper body strength to tug her bowling ball of a body along the floor. She tries to push with her hammy little legs, but she can’t figure out how to push both up and forward at the same time. To be fair, it’s complicated! I didn’t realize how complicated until I watched an infant try and fail to master it for several hours. Also, even if she could figure out both of these things, she’s not strong enough to lift her gut off the floor yet. So her efforts are futile, regardless, but I haven’t told her that.

Anyway, she gets frustrated very fast, and then begins to cry loudly because she is on her tummy, and has not yet really figured out how to flip onto her back (which, again, she was supposed to learn first). So, I flip her over, she scowls at me like I’m fucking with her, and then she immediately flips back onto her stomach again.

And you know, I just really cannot help someone who will not help themselves.