crawling lessons

Late yesterday afternoon, Miss C was in the hallway making serious attempts to crawl (even succeeding at rocking on all fours occasionally) but ending up belly-flopping and tensing each limb until her body looked like a rocking mechanism with her head and arms up at one end, body down, and legs up at the back. Quite cute except for the ensuing yell of frustration.

Her other method starts by sitting, then leaning forward on both arms (she is getting better and better at bearing weight on her left arm--something we still thrill at seeing), and kicking one leg back, leaving the other folded beneath her body as leverage. She is able to get back to sitting from this position, which she feels obviously pleased about.

Little B watched her do a few of these things and thought she was starting to crawl. In fact, she is deceptive about that by squirming enough to have moved around a bit after a few minutes, so I explained to him that she was actually just trying to learn still.

At which point he decided to give his sister crawling lessons. I am always looking for gentle ways for them to play together, and this proved a great idea (until the end when he was getting wound up and rowdy, of course). We shut the gate at the top of the stairs and he proceeded to crawl back and forth in the hallway "showing" her what to do. And don't you know she valianty attempted to imitate him! I finally pulled out my camera (non-digital, of course. . .), and once I did the hamming-it-up began. Hilarious to say the least since Little B kept saying "Take it now" as he passed me (I was in a doorway) and Miss C was trying to find a way to reach me to grab the camera. Her crawling efforts were precious, but I had to strip her down as the sweater-outfit she had on meant she was moving her legs inside the clothes. She really worked hard and wore herself out!

And, as my son got sillier and faster (which meant I got more nervous), my daughter got happier and happier! She was giggling each time he passed and her little body would squirm in delight wishing she could keep up with him.

They are going to be two peas in a pod in no time.
Mutual adoration society for sure.