One Small Crawl for Baby.....

Well, it's over. A wonderful, glorious era of our life is officially behind us. 

It's been a long time coming. We were forewarned and, over the course of the past couple months, incremental changes forced our attention toward a future that is now our present. 

"Desire is the root of all suffering, Father."

Long story short folks, the boy can crawl. And not just a little bit. He can crawl like a bona fide, trouble-finding, have-to-keep-your-eyes-on-him-at-all-times baby. 

Beginning sometime last fall, Master Blackwell began going through the preliminary motions.  First, he learned how to sit up on his own. That was a nice development for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it gave him the look of a chubby little Buddha. Humorous appearances and his sage philosophical advice aside, it also made feeding the little guy easier. 

From there, he went mobile, first by pivoting on his tummy and then aimlessly rolling toward whatever piece of furniture could serve as a roadblock/destination. Movement was slow with this method. Since the boy talks, gurgles and otherwise makes noises to accompany his every effort, it wasn’t too tough to keep tabs on him. A slow-rolling, noisy little baby, it was quaint.

That said, he still managed to make his way over to the television and the accompanying electronics to periodically disconnect the speakers or turn on the video player.

Sometime during the holidays, he began propping himself up on his elbows and knees, rocking himself forward and back as if he was going to crawl — or launch himself forward. But neither launching nor crawling ever happened and he settled for merely rocking back and forth while giggling.

Just a few weeks ago he began the 'army crawl.' Instead of using his feet for propulsion, he used his arms to pull himself forward. But, he had little to grab hold of so he took to occasionally hopping forward with both legs.

Just like this. Except junior had a bigger gun.

Every once in a while he’d parlay each of these developments into a crawl of a foot or two, but never for a sustained distance.

All of which brings me to yesterday.

I set the boy on his blanket with a couple of toys just as I have for months and I walked toward the kitchen, perhaps 15-20 feet away. In the time it took me to reach my destination and get what I was looking for (see: fridge and junk food) the boy made his move.

Cloaked in oblivion, I was unwittingly enjoying the last 30 seconds of a particular peace of mind. I was preparing the chips and dip Greek yogurt, when I looked up and noticed the boy had moved halfway toward me.

I immediately said, “Hey, buddy!” And while I tried to sound friendly, it might have been overly so, because the boy gave me a look of complete bemusement mixed with fear.

That said, he might have just been reflecting the look he saw on his dad’s face. I approached, picked him up and assured him that all was happy and well, knowing full well how things have changed. 

The chase — as they say in terrible old movies — is on.