Incentive

Rhea has been on the "verge" of crawling for close to a month now! It started when we were home in Massachusetts and we were all convinced she would be forwardly mobile by the end of that week...ok so we may have been a little optimistic (or delusional) but there has been progress:

1. May 30th-June 3rd. You could really see her intention to crawl...evidenced by lots of frustration, grunts in the general direction of where she seemed to want to go, eventually toppling over with varying degrees of force.

2. June 3rd-June 9th. Lots of grunting on the floor...attempting to push herself forward with her feet and slight backward movement with these attempts. Beginnings of lunging forward on her hands.

3. June 10th. Got herself up on her hands and knees! Absolutely breathtaking...she would have gotten a perfect score in the baby Olympics.

4. June 10th-June 16th. Increased backward crawling coupled with increased frustration as she watched the object of her desire move farther away from her the more she tried to get to it. She became a pro at this moving backwards and inevitably wedging herself in a corner of the room..she soon discovered that going nowhere was infinitely more frustrating than moving away from where you were trying to go.

5. June 17th-June 25th. Master of the roll and pivot. She learned she could move around the room in an abstract choreography that unfortunately still managed to avoid her intended destination...given her success with the roll and pivot it seems she decided to work on crawling , pulling herself up to standing, and walking all simultaneously...keeping this Mama on her toes while trying to decipher which task her squeal is telling me to help her with. She is in training for the baby ironman.

6. June 26th to present. Still bound and determined to reach her goal...this baby has the heart of an athlete I think. One of her favorite pastimes is to wiggle her way to a stack of blocks I have set up with the sole intention of letting her knock them down. You can just see the determination in her eyes...


And the satisfaction of a job well done!

The only thing she finds more motivating at the moment than these blocks? Why Stashu of course. I'm hoping Stashu becomes more adept at moving out of her way (he is still stubbornly standing his ground as alpha cat)...she has gotten very good at search and destroy missions.