Crawling

So I am so proud to say my son is a crawler. I was a little worried because I had talked to numerous moms that had told me that thier child crawled at 7, 8, 9 months and a few at 11. But I was feeling that for the most part most babies seemed to be crawling at 8 or 9 months. At around 6 months Nixon looked like he was so close to crawling, he was up on his arms and he'd pull his legs in. I was convinced he would be crawling soon. There was a week that I said to myself, I have to be very involved this week because I think this will be the week he crawls. But then he just seemed to be stuck in that state. He would slightly progress each month, like bring his stomach way off the ground, then he started doing the plank, pulling his knees off the ground and butt in the air. Then he started pushing on his legs to go forward but pushing back with his arms and scooting backwards. He scooted back for about 2 months. It started to feel like he was never going to crawl.
Then I started second guessing everything like, "Am I a bad mother? Is he slow? Is this because he watched Nemo so much when he was younger and that TV time stunted his fine motor skills? Is this because he doesn't get a lot of breast milk and is mostly formula fed?" All these questions started pouring into the back of my mind. I told the doctor that he wasn't crawling and he seemed fine with it. When I told others, I knew logically that every baby has his own time line. But since it was my baby, I was just so worried. Plus I read on babycenter.com the things that my baby should be doing, and I just felt like he wasn't caring to do them. For example, the said your baby should be pulling himself up (like in his crib,) he should be clapping, he might wave, he's probably crawling. All these "should be's" that Nixon wasn't doing.
Then a week ago, he took his first crawl. I realized that it seemed like Nixon had been afraid to move his arms forward, like he might fall. So I decided I would "stunt" him like they do in cheerleading, and pull his arms forward while he was pushing his legs and holding him. Then he realized the concept of pulling forward with his arms. And he magically seemed to understand. So he started crawling officially on Sat, Oct 2nd. And it was while he was still 9 months! I also remembered (while i was tlaking to my friend Kelsey at work) that they say if your baby was born 4 weeks early, you expect them to do the things that a baby 4 weeks younger would do because they came out early but aren't as developed as being 4 weeks older. So I realized that if I took 2 weeks off of his age, he seemed perfectly on time to me.

So after conquering crawling, he seemed to do everything else in the same week. He started pulling himself up in his crib to the standing position. A couple days after crawling, he learned to go from crawling to the sitting position. He started sitting and clapping too. It was such a blessing. Now I don't worry about his growth because he definately proved that he is fine and just has his own time clock. God definately washed my fears away.

We are leaving to California in about 2 weeks and I was so scared that we would take him down and he wouldn't be crawling. But I'm so excited because now Nixon is crawling so well. Plus he is so so so much fun at this stage. Its so fun to see Nixon crawl to what he wants and what he's curious about. To see his little personality come through. My parents are going to have so much fun with him I think. I know I always say this but this is my favorite stage. because he's doing so much on his own and showing us more of his personality but he's also still in baby form. not a toddler yet.