New skills – Part 2
Thursday, 7th August 2008 by JulieWe’ve been watching Jon experiment with various forms of locomotion for a long time now. Back in May he was fully into rolling. He also became very good at shuffling himself backwards which led to all sorts of interesting scenarios where he got himself stuck under our sofa, under the dining room chairs, under other people’s sofas, etc.
Finally he worked out a shambling version of leopard-crawl which was very useful for getting him out of these tight spots. So we’ve been watching with interest to see what would evolve next in this complicated, self-taught study of physical control.
We’d seen Jon trying out various things that involved getting his pelvis off the ground, but each time it all collapsed again and it was back to leopard crawling.
I’m guessing that there was a lot of muscle toning and tuning continually going on, because one day, he tried again and it just worked. Suddenly he had himself properly on all fours and all the limb coordination came together, and that was it! Crawling at last. *warm parental glow*
For a few days we had occasional lurches back into leopard-crawl, but soon this was well behind him, and now the confident slap or thud of little palms on the floor coming up from behind is a brilliant indicator that young Jon is on the move. 
(I have a great video of him crawling that first day. Slipping into a partial leopard-crawl and then back again, tongue out in concentration. It’s here if you want to see it. And if your media player won’t play it, I’d recommend trying the free VLC player.)
