As you can read in my previous blog, our son managed to keep his head up of the ground for more than a minute within a few weeks. Short after that he also managed to turn from his belly to his back, but what to expect after that? Is that the biggest change for the next period; how long is it going to take until he can do more besides turning from his belly to his back and keeping his head of the ground?
The answer followed really quick, especially for us. According to your feeling it was only a few weeks ago that your kid was born; in reality he is already a few months old! The development from only laying down on his back to crawling is beautiful and easy to follow. It all starts with keeping his head up, as mentioned before. After a while he puts his elbows on the ground and pushes himself of the ground so his belly is also of the floor. After he mastered this, he pulled up his knees which made him “sit” in a crawling position.
After this mini milestone was reached, it took a while before there was really improvement in the moving abilities. Our son enjoyed the new view that he now had from inside his box; he found out that the living room and his bedroom were very interesting from this point of view. After a few weeks this was also not really interesting anymore and the time was there to explore these rooms by himself. We already started practicing with him on the floor: going towards “crawling stand” from laying down became easier by the day. And then there was the moment that he actually started moving. Oddly (but afterwards actually normal) he started moving backwards at first. When you put him in the middle of the room he starting “crawling” belly flat on the ground backwards until he could not go any further. All this passed by accompanied by loud giggling and applause from proud Mom and Dad. Quickly after moving backwards he also started to crawl belly flat forwards and shortly after that he also started crawling with his belly of the ground. At this moment, a couple of months later, it sometimes hit you that all this progress was booked really fast by our little guy. Now you have to run after him because he covered the complete distance of the living room in a couple of seconds. The next step will be walking, but we are still waiting for that moment to happen, more about the steps towards walking in one of my following blogs.
In the period that the little sir was mastering the crawling part, also the moment that mommy starts going back to work arrived. And then there is the difficult moment (especially for mommy) that the little guy is going to the Day Care for the first time. You could feel the tension already the night before he went there for the first time. Off course it’s very exciting to “leave your son behind” at an unknown place with people you hardly know for the first time. Fortunately he was welcomed really professionally at the day care. This convinced dad, and also a bit mom, that this was going to be all fine. Just before we left, the ladies from the day care told us that it was fine if we called a number of times during the day to check on how he was doing. The first day went by really good: he was happy for the whole day, slept well, ate well and he was happy to see us when we were picking him up. He’s now going to the day care for one and a half day a week with mixed success: one day it’s all going fine and the other day it’s crying if mommy leaves or when we are picking him up again. One thing remains the same every time: a big smile and enthusiastic arm movements when mommy or daddy is picking him up to go home!