Crawling Curtis!!!

It's official!  We FINALLY have a crawler!  Phew!  I know they same some kids don't crawl, but I could tell that she really wanted to and was just slow figuring it out.  Steven and I weren't concerned in the least because we could see her physical and social development occurring every single day...it's just that the crawling wasn't the part that was developing!  Coincidentally, she crawled the day that we bought the baby gates for our stairs.  Steven was assembling the gates, when I hear him, "Psst"ing me, and I look over to see the little girl crawling on all fours!  In true Hamilton fashion, I couldn't contain my excitement and squealed and jumped up and down.  Note to self: squealing and jumping up and down is a sure fire way to get a baby to stop crawling...for the rest of the day.  So we don't have a video of her crawling for the very first time because of Mommy's overly enthusiastic temperament, but we do have this hysterical little gem:

So she was ten months and one week when she finally figured out the crawling, but the first couple days, she had some trouble picking her head up as she crawled.  It was more of a wheelbarrow or plow action going on.

Her crawl has had quite the evolution over her week of practice:  Due to her difficulty holding up her head in the beginning, the crawl started as a sort of army crawl, then evolved to her picking her head up but wanting to keep a leg in front of her for extra support, and finally figured out how to crawl on all fours.  She still keeps her leg in front of her sometimes downstairs because we don't have any carpet.  I think she's smart enough to know that taking a tumble downstairs hurts a great deal more than up.  She is to the point where she loves chasing and being chased.  I love it!

Everyone warned us how much things will change when she started crawling, and it totally has!  I can't even count the number of times that I have been by the sink doing dishes when I feel little hands on the back of my legs.  That aforementioned Hamilton excitability holds for good, and scary, events.  Let's just say that I have unintentionally made Lily cry on more than one occasion when she sneaks up on me.  Steven calls it payback for the way I acted as a child.  And now.

We had a great trip to the pool recently, where Daddy put Lily under water for the very first time.  She didn't mind it a bit!  (I was hesitant to film it in case it ended up looking like us torturing a baby...)

Can't believe we are so close to her one year birthday party!  Aaaahhhhh!!!!!!!

I post videos all the time of Lily to my YouTube channel, way more than I post on my blog.  If you're at all interested, feel free to peruse my page by clicking here.