Tadpole goes exploring

It's been a big couple of days for Tadpole.  She's working on exploring her world in new ways, socially and physically.

On the social front, Tadpole had two playdates scheduled Wednesday (we attended one, with friends C and c, and slept through the other one - trying to follow a one-year old who's walking around can be exhausting and require extra sleeping time on dad's shoulder!), and another today.  It's been fascinating for me to watch babies interact with each other.  They're really intrigued by the other baby, what the other baby can do, and what the other baby finds interesting.  (Although at times yesterday, Tadpole gave up on trying to keep up with c & just settled into some serious nomming of whatever toy c didn't try to take from her).  I'm going to be curious to see how today's visit with a younger baby in our apartment complex goes.  This one's on neutral ground in the lounge - dad needs to make sure to pack some blankets and toys as well as the diaper bag!
(And yes, play dates are also great for me - listening to NPR and babbling with Tadpole are insufficient reminders of my adulthood, so these help).

The really exciting news around here, though, is that Tadpole is crawling!  (And by "exciting", I mean that R and I turned to each other and almost in unison referred to it as "the beginning of the end" ... much babyproofing is needed in a short time!)

Tadpole's been army crawling for a little while now, dragging herself forward on her forearms, but especially on the carpeting in her room, the coefficient of friction is high enough that this is a pretty tedious process. (And yes, I do enjoy explaining the difficulty to her in physics terms).  Tuesday afternoon, I set my glasses down well out of reach, and was shocked to find Tadpole smoothly pivot (a skill she's had for a while), then bring her knees up in order to push herself forward.  By the time I go over my surprise, she was happily clutching and nomming on the glasses.

For the rest of the afternoon, I tried to induce her to crawl again.  The glasses & phone were great inducements.  All other toys were insufficient - she returned to her former method of reaching them, banging the ground in frustration and yelling at the toy to "Come Here Now!" in Tadpolese.

After a nap, however, things changed significantly.  I was worried about showing off Tadpole's new skill to R, and wanted to make sure that I had the proper inducements ready.  None were needed.  I set Tadpole down on the ground and reached for my phone to put it just out of reach, only to find that my daughter was halfway across the room moving steadily towards her shelf of toys.  Crawling skill: Mastered!

On the one hand, this means I have to be a bit more vigilant with Tadpole, but she's not really very fast yet.  Most importantly, though, she doesn't have to interact with the world through me, which is really great for both of us.  Tadpole's figured out that if there's a toy she wants, she can crawl over & get it ... there are times now when I try to interact with her & she ignores me in favor of the cool-toy-that-she-got-all-by-herself-because-she's-a-big-crawling-girl.  Ah well, I still get the naptime snuggles since someone wakes herself up after 40 minutes and can't get back to sleep by herself.  Maybe next we'll practice that skill ... I'm just not sure how to work in bribing her with the phone!