On the Move

Parents generally get excited and look forward to when their baby starts to move around and show signs of crawling, and eventually, walking. But I think with the second child (as I've also seen with my mommy friends), crawling is something that we want to delay as long as possible. We don't want another child on the move and have to chase after. The discouragement ranges from not encouraging them to crawl to pushing their butt down when they try to. I guess I haven't been discouraging Elliot enough. He started to scoot backwards a little bit when he was 5 1/2 months and now that he's almost 6 1/2 months old, he's really starting to crawl backwards. Crawling is not always the classic image of a baby on all fours moving forward. Some babies get from point A to point B by rolling continuously. Some army-crawl by dragging their bodies. Elliot pushes himself backwards. I guess he won't have control of where he's going for now, but just the fact that he can move around.

Scarlett didn't crawl until she was 10 months old. And I think she started by scooting backwards too. We were worried that she didn't crawl for the longest time and while that wasn't developmentally delayed to be crawling at 10 months, it was definitely on the later side. Now Elliot is on the early side. I guess I'm in trouble.