Come on Baby, Do the Locomotion

I have heard that some children sit quietly. Legend has it that there are children who sit in your lap and snuggle. I evidently did not order that model.

Peanut is a woman on the go. Even if she is not actually moving from one place to another, she is moving her hands or kicking her feet, or making her chair bounce, or something. If she is taking a bottle, she is swinging her legs at the same time. If she is on our bed she is examining the thread count and seeing if our sheets are scratch and sniff. And now that she can throw things down on the floor? Let's just say that Jillian Michaels and her workout routine "The Shred" have nothing on Peanut's dedication to rebuilding my abs.

Come on Pooh, there's always room for one more!

A few months back we bought the Nutter a caminador so she could "walk off" some of that energy. It took her about 6 seconds to figure it out, and though it started a little jerkily, pretty soon she could maneuver herself through the space between our trunk and our couch, get under the dining table, and even do a wicked ninja spin move I think you have to see to believe. (Why do you never have the camera when you need it??) She has loved the mobility and the freedom to go where she wants to go without having to rely on those dreadfully slow padres to figure out where she wants to be. Of course two months later I just read that the American Association of Pediatrics does not recommend walkers. Actually, to be more accurate, in bold type and italics it said, "the AAP strongly urges parents not to use baby walkers." Oops. Too late now. In theory these walkers actively rob your child of her will to walk. My thoughts on that at the moment? Praise.be.to.God.

In reality the following video does not do justice to her moves, but it has other fine qualities I think you will appreciate...

Caminador from Richard Williams on Vimeo.

Tag to the front, like all the cool kids do.

Then, when our friend Joann Lee came down with a delegation earlier this year she brought Peanut a Jenny Jump-Up (yes, they do now make them gender specific...as with everything it seems). The bad news is that we have no door frames. The good news is that Papi is an engineer and rigged up something that I am sure is also not approved by the AAP, but it works and we like it. (Remind of all this very kindly please when I am fretting later that Peanut takes our rules more like guidelines...). The funniest thing about the Jenny Jump-Up has been to see the various ways Peanut makes use of it. She prefers to sit in it backwards so she can grab and eat the tag. She uses it as a way to practice her ice-skating moves since we don't have much ice on hand around here. She does the standard jumping, but she also does this sort of jump/walk forward thing that quite honestly makes me think of the contraption Dolly, Jane and Lily put on Dabney Coleman in the movie "9 to 5". Unfortunately every video I have gets posted sideways...have to figure out how to change that.

And finally (for now), Peanut is officially crawling. She started out with ranitas (little froggies) - forceful hops in which she would push off with her legs and then throw her arms back landing, essentially, on her chest and face. We tended to keep her on the bed in that stage (for fairly obvious reasons), but that girl could make some serious progress in fairly short order. It took her a while to figure out how to move her arms along with her legs (rather than just getting them the heck out of the way), but now she has it mastered. What I love is that if I go to the kitchen to get something, and she is not interested in being alone in the living room (there is a peek through so I can see her...no hyperventilating please...), she does not cry but rather shuffles her way around the corner to come see me. Think you can get rid of me that easily mom? I don't think so...

So now we are on to full-out exploring, pulling up, and generally upping the workout intensity. Maybe we'll snuggle next year. :)