Inchworm

(sung to the tune of I Have A Little Dreidel)

I have a little inchworm
He doesn't go too fast
But little Evan Tompkins
Is on the move at last

Granted, babies almost half his age can still crawl circles around him, but at 10 1/2 months, Evan has finally made his first real efforts at mobility this week. His crude attempts to get his body where he wants to go remind me half the time of a war veteran trying to drag his partially paralyzed body out of a land mine field (legs, Evan... you have legs. This crawling thing will work much better if you USE them). The rest of the time, I want to dress him all in green and call him Inchworm as he gets up on all 4s, scootches his tush way up into the air and collapses, propelling his entire body forward 3 inches in the process. He's neither fast nor graceful. But I could care less if he traveled from Point A to Point B on his forehead at this point... at least he's moving, and now hopefully some of the frustration he's been showing in the past few weeks will start to dissipate.

He's actually been doing this creeping thing for a few days now, but he generally needs to be enticed to move with his favorite toys and lots of cheerleading, so I haven't been willing to call him mobile just yet. But today I actually saw him move of his own accord without anyone encouraging him -- I left him alone sitting on the floor in the hallway while I helped Julia in the bathroom and when I looked up, he was lurching by the bathroom door, trying to chase after the cat and gleefully screaming "AT! AT!" at the top of his lungs. The poor cat raced by half a second later looking terrified. Um, yeah. Now I remember this stage. Why was I so anxious to reach it?