Closet Crawler:

{sneak peek of our x-mas cards.

Picture of Conrad I took yesterday}

Conrad has more of Dustin's personality in how he interacts with the world around him. He might get suspended from school for mooning his drama class, or toilet paper houses when he's older like his mom, but right now he's like Dad, and I like that just fine!

He seems to analyze everything and needs to know how each part to a toy works before he plays with it. He will be a directions reader, like Dustin. I on the other hand, do not read directions, or seldom do. I like to just dive right into something.

My baby is not like that at all it seems.

I think this cautious, analyzing-the-situation characteristic is also prevalent in his ability to crawl. (If he wants to study and perfect the art of crawling before he actually does it, that's fine by me....I guess.) He needs to think things through, he's not a "people pleaser" or rather, he's not a"mommy pleaser" I should say. I have been begging, cheering, encouraging and bribing him to crawl, and I know he's only 8 months, and he'll do it on his own time and blah blah blah, but seriously,

get moving already!!

He hasn't shown much interest in crawling. He likes to fall onto his belly, flail around, grunt, squint his eyes-straining, yell and flap his arms up and down. Then when he gets pissed enough because he's not going anywhere, I'll sit him upright until he falls over, and repeats the whole flailing-yelling-grunting over again.

BUT THEN yesterday around midnight, Dustin got up with the baby and before he left the room, I asked him to lower the crib. He knows I've been envisioning the baby falling out of his crib, so he obliged and in the middle of the night he took the crib apart and made it lower. While he was doing all of that though, he sat Conrad in the living room on the rug and turned on the TV, and when back into the living room to get him, HE WAS ALL THE WAY IN THE KITCHEN Y'ALL. That's like, 12 feel or something crazy!

Dustin flung open our bedroom door to tell me Conrad had made it all the way into the kitchen! I was super excited too, but also super tired, so i drifted back off to sleep...

any way, the point is, I kind of think of Conrad like I used to think of my stuffed animals when I was a kid. As soon as you leave the room, they're ALIVE! They move and dance and THEY CRAWL! (or slither, or scoot, whatever you want to call it. I call it crawling thankyouverymuch!)

So the last few days, I've been trying to get him to do it again,

but he wont!

It's JUST like when he said his first word "UP" He said it 3 times and Dustin heard it too,

and ever since, he hasn't uttered a single "UP!"

OR the other day he waved to my friend Lori.

Has he done it since?? NO!

MY SON IS A CLOSET CRAWLER, A CLOSET WAVER,

AND HE ALSO SAYS "UP" but only if you have candy.

If I leave the room, he moves. If I'm there, forget it!

Maybe I should just start ignoring him and stop

making a big deal out of everything,

and he'll start (performing) doing baby stuff....

Closet crawler....we're onto you!