Oshiri 2

After months of moving backwards, Benjamin has finally figured out how to crawl forwards. You want to know how I convinced to him to put his thang down flip it and reverse it? Food. Before, I'd tried using everything under the sun to lure him forwards. He turned his nose up at favorite toys. He wouldn't budge for the pug. He wouldn't even scoot for me, his own mother! But then I put a few Cheerios on the floor in front of him, and he took off like a bat out of hell. Ok, fine, it was more like a very slow and chubby hamster.

My elation over his newfound crawling skills was tempered by concern over the fact that we had barely performed any babyproofing on the place. That first day he started crawling forwards, he managed to tip over Oliver's water bowl, catch his fingers in a drawer, get into the garbage, and nearly climb into the dishwasher. And all this happened within the hour that it took me to cook dinner that night!

The good news is that Benjamin is getting to expand his horizons. He is now able to move around freely and observe things which have previously escaped his attention. This has its ups and downs. On the upside, he finds toys which have gotten stuck under the couch or stray Cheerios that escaped the vacuum. On the downside, he sometimes finds himself face to face with-- Well, why don't I just let you see for yourself...