Still Crazy After All These Years

My daughter is crazy. And I’m convinced she gets it from her Momma. When we last left Finley and her quest for becoming mobile, she had just about learned to roll in both directions. Well, she’s not only accomplished that ability, she’s working her way toward the dreaded crawl.

The way she does this is by flopping over onto her belly and hoisting herself up onto all fours. This part she has down. It’s the next part that is crucial to her development. She has not quite learned how to move her knees in the vital locomotion way. In fact, she pretty much does everything else EXCEPT move her knees.

She’ll flop back down onto her belly. She’ll roll one way or the other. But her favorite by far is to get up onto her tip toes and point her diaper butt straight up into the air in a sort of jackknife position. In the yoga world, this is known as the “downward dog.” In our house, it’s just hilarious.

Of course, she can only hold this position for a short time and usually flops back down. On the bright side, she moves forward about an inch… So she’s making headway. Most of the time she needs to rest after this exercise and rolls over to her back with whatever toy she’s managed to grab. At this point, she attempts to put most of said toy into her mouth and let out her shrill little scream of joy/frustration (It varies by the hour).

This continues for quite sometime. She lurches another direction. Rolls the other way. Runs into a toy or a chair, decides whether or not she can put it in her mouth then rolls another way until she sees the next toy to target. Then she launches into her crawl attempt which turns into the yoga move which ends in the high-pitched squeal.

Now she’s added a couple of new twists to her repertoire. First, there’s the new move she’s added to the end of the downward dog. Instead of flopping all the way down to her belly, she know rolls halfway onto her side with one arm holding her up and the other arm placed on her behind. She’s got one knee on the floor and the other is straightened out. It’s a very model-like pose. It’s almost like she’s asking for a photograph to be taken.

The other new move happens while she lies on her back. She thumps her legs on the ground a minimum of three times before bringing both feet to her mouth. Of course, her whole body convulses during this feat, which helps me to decide that my daughter, indeed, is crazy. And isn’t it great?

You see, in the first nine months of her being, she was folded up inside her Momma. She was yanked and pulled through a 10cm doorway then wrapped up in swaddling blankets for another 2-3 months after. Then she was confined to a small bed and not allowed to roll over at night, for safety reasons. But it’s not like she would have gotten anywhere, anyway. Her little muscles hadn’t quite developed and her best muscle was used for eating.

As each month progressed and she realized that her arms were more than a couple of things to flap around, her neck got stronger and those little legs began to squirm a bit. Suddenly, tummy time was more than a face-down endeavor. She could hold her head up and look at this world that was now beginning to come into focus as her eyes began to clear. That meant there was something to see and something to try and get to. Something these new little fingers could grab. So, she kept trying to get there.

Every day there were new colors and sounds and tastes to try. And every day she got stronger and stronger to the point that she could pull her little body toward something or roll toward something, just by changing the position of her legs. Now she knows that by getting up as high as she can, she can reach that new, interesting and possibly tasty item that has caught her attention. And that is pretty darn amazing, but not the best part. Well, not to me, anyway.

The best part is that in those moments when she decides she can’t quite get what she wants, she takes a little rest and tries again. And if it still doesn’t work, she stops, takes a look around and has fun. In fact, she gets silly. She screams and giggles and wiggles her whole body and flops around like a seal and bumps into things. She blows raspberries and slobbers and tastes EVERYTHING. Then she squeals again and looks around for Momma and Poppa for approval.

And what do we do? We plop down on the floor next to her and make silly noises and tickle and kiss her and blow on her belly. We shake the toys and make them talk in funny voices. And it is absolutely fantastic.

It’s funny how we start out on the floor and work and work to get up on our feet so we can become adults and go to work and make money because that’s what we’re told makes us happy. But my little girl has taught me that the secret to happiness is to spend as much time as you can on the floor, being crazy with the people you love being. It’s a lot more fun and a lot less stressful.