new milestone

I am pleased to announce that N has reached a major developmental milestone... CRAWLING!!! At long last, my 11 1/2 month old baby has decided to become mobile. At 8 months, when most of the other kids his age were starting to make their way around the nursery floor, N was content to sit and play with toys. We told ourselves, and others,"Oh, E didn't crawl until 9 months". Well, at 9 months, my sister visited with her 6 month old who crawled circles around Noah as he sat contentedly playing with toys. At 10 months I got a little concerned as those aforementioned babies in the nursery started to not only crawl, but pull up and cruise. Meanwhile, our baby still sat like a contented little Buddha on the floor. At 11 months, the concern had grown into a worry, so we took him for an evaluation at the pediatrician's . She said not to worry, that he looked fine and healthy, and would probably crawl very soon. Since our visit about 2 weeks ago, we have been trying to entice him with toys. He would go from a sitting position down to his knees and stretch his hand as far as he could to reach the toy, and then back up to a sitting position again. He did scoot backwards a little, but never deliberately forward. Until yesterday. He was reaching for a toy and had fully extended his hand, and took a little skootch forward with his knee. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then another miniscule skootch, and he was moving! We immediately burst out in applause, and "Yea N!" He sat up and clapped his hands and smiled, as if to say, "I don't know what I just did, but hey, I'll clap too!" So now we get to breathe a big sigh of relief as well as try to keep tiny pieces of dirt, trash, and toys away from our little explorer.