And she's off

Thumper is on the move. She officially started crawling at about 6.00 pm tonight. She is one day short of being 8 months old. BallFiend crawled when he was 8 months and 2 weeks old. (I know, I know, you're not supposed to compare your children.)

I was in the kitchen, getting dinner organised and looked over to see her scooting across the floor chasing a toy block. Interestingly she is crawling commando style, just like BallFiend did. However she has a bit of a variation - she holds her left arm across her body and uses the entire forearm to pull herself along with, as well as using her right hand. So far, she isn't using her feet at all, they just wave about in the air, kicking wildly, as if she is swimming!

About a week ago, Thumper suddenly started being really difficult to get settled in the evenings. All her life, bedtime has been pretty straight-forward: put on her PJs, feed her and stick her in the cot. She goes to sleep. Suddenly, it all changed - I put her in her cot at about 8.00 pm but she cried and cried and would not go to sleep. I tried feeding her more, holding her in the quiet, dark room, then we tried controlled crying. None of it worked. The DeepSpice tried holding her and finally she fell asleep in his arms. This went on for three nights in a row.

We were racking our brains trying to work out what was going on:

• separation anxiety?
• teething? (her first tooth started peeking through on Monday 3 May)
• the cold weather?
• unimpressed that Shaun Micallef didn't win the gold logie?

Then, two nights ago, I made sure she went to bed a bit earlier - 7.00 pm. And it seemed to help a lot. So I suspected that the unsettled behaviour was due to being over-tired when going to bed. But now that she has started crawling, I think that may have had something to do with it. Her brain working overtime, trying to put all the pieces into place to figure out how to crawl.

Ah, babies... a puzzle, wrapped in a enigma, embedded in a mystery.

--