Poetry in motion

After rolling a grand total of 8 times in her life, we thought that Alice might by-pass crawling. Perhaps she simply can't be bothered to get moving and would rather spend her life hanging around in her pants like her father?

Yesterday she woke up a little out of sorts. She remained the same after her morning nap and through the morning stroll to get Mummy's coffee. I cancelled our attendance at that afternoon's Mothers group, thinking I would give her a quiet half day. We made our way to "post-natal" pilates (post natal in that you are allowed to take the baby that natalled along with you) where, to be honest, I expected the worst. There were a few classes in Alice's younger days where we had to flee the room, such were the histrionics. Although the instructor and her lovely assistant will hold the babies if they should cry, this was never good enough for Alice - it always had to be me. I've completed many a core stability exercise with Alice propped up somewhere about my person.

While there are usually only two or three of us in the class, this week we were five. That meant five babies. Alice was in her element. Unphased by the fact that one of the others choked on a rusk and had to be Heimlich-manoeuvred, Alice sat up and bounced around the room, usually towards a boy baby. She was particularly enamoured with baby Phoenix, quite liked Ariel but was not at all interested in Cassidy. (I wonder if she will chastise us for choosing such a traditional name for her when she is older?!) But I digress...quite the star of her own show, young Alice cheered up immensely and amused herself by travelling around the room on her nappy clad bottom, paying her respects to each baby in turn.

The rest of the day passed in cheerfulness and much of the same. Our little appartment is so small that I began to worry that she might have been stifled. We have been planning to chuck out our coffee table for about six months, so I actually did that yesterday. Using the fine Australian tradition of leaving it out on the street and watching your downstairs neighbours requisition it ten minutes later, I created a good deal more space for our intrepid baby. Before long she was travelling the living room floor on her bottom, thinking about crawling positions more earnestly than in previous playtimes and even happily standing up against the "poufe".




Look, no hands (or hair), I just prop myself up with my tum


Thinking about crawling towards the TV remote which is off to the right...

The bouncing bottom manouvre (a few days before it started to take her places)


Note to the technologically savvy Grannies - I don't know if this video will work in the e-mail format; you might have to go to the actual blog to see it...either way, it works best with the sound ON.