And so it begins

"Not with a bang, but a whimper."

That's how Eliot described the end of the world, and how I'll sum up the onset of Madeline's crawling. She's not performing your textbook all-fours crawling yet, but she's moving herself. When she's on the floor and sees something she wants, she goes there. It's more of an Army crawl, with her belly still on the ground and the occasional hands-and-knees flourish.

This weekend we were practicing together - I put Mallory the Monkey on the floor at increasing distances from Madeline, and each time she would shimmy and squirm and work her way to her target. I was getting it on video when I realized that she was actually pretty interested in the camera. So I placed the camera on the floor and, as you can see, she got it pretty quickly. (The distance may seem a little foreshortened in the video, but she started about five feet away from the camera.)

These days we're making sure Madeline's getting plenty of tummy time - she seems to enjoy learning to crawl and is excited to get down and get moving.