Scooching (Kind of), Talking (Sort of), and Chewing (Definitely)

Well, we still don't have any crawling, but we might very well have another butt-scoocher on our hands.

Elsa started crawling around the time she turned 10 months old, and did the army-commando tummy crawl until she was about 13 months old, at which point she graduated to butt-scooting (she never did crawl with her tummy off the floor). It's now looking like Claire might skip crawling entirely and go straight to mopping the floor with her rear end. At this point, she still moves pretty slowly, at least compared to Elsa at the height of her scoochiness. But Claire can now get across the family room in two or three minutes if she's motivated. She generally gravitates toward the entertainment center.

She does it in a completely different way than Elsa did—here's a picture of Claire doing her thing. She shifts her hips first to one side and then the other, doing this little splits in the process, so she's really wiggling her way across the room rather than scooching. It seems pretty inefficient, but I have a feeling it will evolve in the coming weeks into something more like what Elsa did (and Elsa was pretty fast in her heyday). When I told my mom about this, she said, "This makes no sense! Why wouldn't either of these girls just crawl?" But I actually think, for these two girls, staying in a sitting position actually IS the most efficient thing. Neither of them much liked tummy time, and Claire still can't get from her tummy up to a sitting position on her own. So if it's possible skip the steps of getting down onto their tummies, crawling to wherever they want to be, and hoisting themselves back up, why wouldn't they? Makes perfect sense to their mommy! : ) And once again, Elsa and Claire are proving to be remarkably alike—these two are just peas in a pod.

In other news, Claire is saying a few words—she clearly says "dog" whenever she sees Belle. Sometimes it even sounds like she says the "g" sound, but usually it comes out more like "dodd". She also definitely calls me "ma ma" (she says "ma ma ma" for other things as well, but the two "ma"s together seem to be reserved for me). She loves to point at people's noses and often says "nah" when she does that. She will also usually point out eyes and mouth when asked. And the best development of all is that her screeching stage, as mentioned a few posts ago, may have already ended! (Knock on wood.) Instead, when she wants to talk, she says "eh eh eh eh eh eh" over and over again, in a very conversational tone. Or sometimes "mm mm mm mm mm." She does that A LOT, and often quite loudly, but I'll take that over the the screeching any day of the week. I just can't wait for her to be able to voice the things she so badly wants to tell us.

And last but not least, we're still waiting on those darn bottom teeth to make their appearance. She's had a white dot on her bottom gum for several days now, but it doesn't seem to have expanded into anything tooth-shaped just yet. However, yesterday I was playfully tossing her up in the air over my head, and the odd angle revealed something unexpected: Claire HAS her two top front teeth! And I didn't even notice! I feel like such an inattentive mother! Here I was obsessing about her bottom teeth, and checking those bottom gums every day, because that's usually where babies get their first teeth—and hello, she switched things up and has two fully-formed teeth up on top! They look like they're about one-third of the way in at the most, so I'm sure they haven't been there very long, but who knows? Those top gums are difficult to get a look at sometimes. Plus, dentist Opa babysat for her two days ago, and he didn't notice!

And so ends the excuses/justification portion of our program. : )