On Saturday, Anna Sophia hit the seven-month mark and her first tooth made an appearance above surface. She purses her lips around her still-sore gums, and she hums and hums.
Anna spent the weekend trying to propel herself forward, mostly overbalancing onto her face. She tried "creeping" flat on her belly but could only go backwards -- and then yell when she realized that she was farther and farther away from her goal.
On Tuesday, we finally had to name whatever it is that Anna is doing to get herself around the room "crawling." It's kind of a bum-scoot with a lean-over. It involves one foot flat on the floor, knee up, and one foot in front with the knee down. It looks weird, but it gets her where she wants to go. Mostly, she wants to go where the cat is. Barring that, she'll settle for the catfood. We have had to move the catfood.
We have given up on having furniture. There were so many head bumps on Tuesday alone that we put away two chairs and a coffeetable. When she kicked up the attempts to climb up on things, we had to move the piano bench and . . . umm, I don't really remember what furniture we had anymore, now that we sit on the floor so much. The piano legs, the couch, the remaining chair, the bookshelves, and parents' legs and bodies remain to be climbed. And there are always walls to be scaled. Now that Anna can get into previously inaccessible parts of the room, she spends a lot of time banging her hands on the baseboard heaters, enjoying the sound, and then trying to climb the walls. She definitely knows that the climbing will get her standing, and standing will get her walking, and walking will get her running, and running will let her catch the cat and rule the world.
(Earlier today, she tried to climb her aunt Emily, but she kept sliding down the bump in the belly that is her little cousin.)
Meanwhile, the cat is alarmed at the lack of furniture and even more alarmed that the baby is turning up in places the baby has never been before. Cat and baby have clearly negotiated some kind of detente, though, since they seem quite comfortable angling around the edges of each other's prescribed territory, and kitty more and more often waltzes past baby (though healthily just out of reach). She likes to live dangerously.
