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So my little boy, Gus, is an over-achiever. Okay - I just like to say that because he’s 95% in height and 93% in weight. But hey, that’s well above average right? In practicality, he’s a big, happy, vocal, very tactile guy.

But at 9 months, he hasn’t really shown any indication that he’s interested in crawling. Frankly, we haven’t really encouraged it either. He rolls, rotates, and pushes up - but he seems to know that if he stares at a toy long enough and uses “The Force”, it’ll come to him. Or at least we’ll hand it to him.

My wife has a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education and knows all about milestones and development in infants. So if she’s not concerned, I’m not concerned.

We have several friends with kids roughly the same age as Gus and most of their kids are crawling. We’ve seen the work it takes to chase them around and thus, we haven’t put the pressure on Gus to get his limbs moving. Why push the kid?

And then came tonight. I watched him, sitting up, playing innocently with a rubber ducky - carrying on some kind of conversation that only an infant and rubber ducky would understand when he tossed the ducky a country mile (okay, maybe it was only four feet, but I have great Sandy Koufax hopes for him) and fixate on the duck in a way I’d not observed before.

He was going to get that duck, come hell or high water.

Gus leaned forward onto his hands. His hands gripped the floor with great determination and he lurched forward with his torso. He looked almost as surprised as I did when his chubby little legs followed - first one knee, then the next. In seconds, he relocated his duck and looked at me with great satisfaction only to discover my jaw had dropped. He crawled.

And so here we go - the comfort of what my wife called the “flower pot” stage, where you can plop him down with a toy and confidently know he’s really not going anywhere, is over. My boy is crawling.

And even though I know my free time will be consumed with chasing him down, I couldn’t be more proud of him. The grin has yet to leave my mug. I even called my parents to tell them.

My boy is mobile.

If any of you have crawling stories, I would love to see them and share them with our friends - your comments are appreciated!

Tags: crawling