Crawling!!

Elsa will be 10 months old tomorrow, and yes, she is finally CRAWLING! She actually started rolling from place to place about a week ago, and on Monday evening she graduated to actual crawling. And what was the item that motivated her to crawl for the very first time? The phone. I had just gotten done leaving a message for Aunt Ellen and then talking to Bob, and when I hung up, she went for it. God knows she's certainly had a lot to say lately with her babbling—I guess she's tired of saying it all to me. : )

That first evening she really only went a few inches, and her crawling was this funny little caterpillar-like move where she pushed up on her arms and then lurched her entire body forward. But since then she's gotten a lot more distance under her belt, and her crawling is now looking more like the army-commando crawl that Carter is an expert at.

She is pushing up with her arms quite a bit, but still doesn't really get her stomach off the floor while she's moving. And she's still doing a lot of rolling in combination with the crawling—whatever method gets her from Point A to Point B seems fine with her.

And while Elsa was a good 3 months behind her cousin Carter in this particular arena, it's actually pretty amazing to me that she was even able to crawl when she did, because a) she's tremendously fat; and b) she has one parent who crawled at 12 months and another who supposedly never crawled at all. So, considering that she has neither the physical nor the genetic basis for crawling remotely on time, Bob and I are pretty darn proud of her. Good job, baby girl! You rock! (And roll.)