Moving Forward

This post reminds me of a funny story that Brian has shared with me several times.  I love hearing Brian give his account of it: 
When Brian was a teenager, he owned a truck.  Being the typical teenage boy up to no good and being bored one day he decided to take his truck mudding.  He ragged his truck out that day.  I don't know exactly how he did it, but his mudding excursion ended up breaking his truck.  Scared to death of his dad finding out that his recklessness caused the damage, he managed to get his truck to a car wash to clean it up.  He washed away all of the dried clumps of mud from his truck until it was sparkly clean and beautiful.  To hear Brian tell it, it was spotless, and there was no trace of evidence.  He told his dad when he showed up, "I don't know what happened to it.  It just broke down."  Except Brian forgot one teeny-tiny detail.  He forgot to wash the whole undercarriage.  The entire bottom was still caked with mud.  Well his dad, being a smart dad, figured out in no time that Brian wasn't so innocent in the matter.  He was one pissed off dad. 

This was the problem with the truck.  It wouldn't drive forward.  It only drove in reverse.  His dad, very angry, his left hand on the steering wheel, his head turned over his shoulder, resting his right arm over the bench seat, drove that truck from the car wash. all. the. way. home.... in REVERSE!  He drove several miles.  He drove down Cypresswood, across 249, and into the neighborhood, periodically glaring at Brian through the front windshield as Brian followed behind in his dad's car.  He got majorly grounded for that one.  Ha!  I love hearing Brian tell the story. 

So I don't know if my husband passed on his irreversible misfortune (see what I just did right there?), or if this is something common with babies, but my children seem to get themselves stuck in reverse when learning to become mobile.  Arden and Jack, especially, had problems going forward in the baby walkers and while crawling.  They would see something in front of them and try to go toward it.  Their mind would say go forward but their bodies ended up going backwards instead.  This caused them lots of frustration.  For the past month Jack has been sliding all around the floor, pushing himself backwards.  He would get so mad when his object of desire kept getting farther and farther away.  He then learned that if he wanted something all he needed to do was turn AWAY from it and go backwards to get it.... pretty comical to watch.

I have a baby calendar that I keep track of Jack's baby milestones with.  I had been impatiently waiting to mark the calendar with the "crawling" sticker, but didn't feel right denoting the achievement with him still in crab-mode.  These are the things I stress about.  I know, I need help.  So, finally on Saturday, to my delight, I added the sticker; he actually moved FORWARD!  Yay!  He crawled!  It's only an army crawl, but it's a start in the right direction. 

 

I have a really cute video of Arden stuck in reverse-mode at Jack's age, but unfortunately wasn't able to load it on here.  So here's a few more pictures of Jack in his crawling endeavors. 

Trying to crawl

planking

his expression is funny

And finally just a sweet picture of Jack when he fell asleep in his walker.  such a sweetheart