Crawling!

I didn't realize how excited I would be to see Elsie crawl for the first time. I think the best part about it was that she crawled on the first time I tried to get her to and then that she just kept doing it and doing it and has been crawling all over the place ever since.
For a while, we would just set Elsie up to play with her toys all around her, so she never really had to move too much. Then I started to spread the toys out more and she would get to them by rolling, crawling backward, or diving. A common thing for her lately would be to dive, then sit up again, dive and stretch in the direction, then sit up, then dive one more time and stretch to what she wanted. I was starting to think she might skip traditional crawling altogether.
On Saturday, I noticed that she was really motivated to get to two things really quick. The first time it was a tiny speck of paper hidden in the carpet. The second time it was a little black string. Both times, she dove over toys and shimmied/army crawled really quick to get there. So I tried to think of something tiny I could entice her with and I thought of puffs. I brought a puff over to see what she would do and BOOM she crawled right away. I really thought it was a fluke but ran to get the video camera to try and tape it and she did it again and again...





Now it is like a light switch came on and she is crawling everywhere. She is already much more coordinated than she is in those videos. The best part was that this morning she was playing so happily and I was about 10 feet away. I said, "hey cutie pie!" She turned and smiled at me and then crawled over and I gave her a big hug. She is the best birthday present