Grass 101 — Extra Credit

Leaves are apparently quite tasty.

Grass 101

I have been having problems with my left foot for awhile, and the short of it is that I haven’t been able to walk very comfortably or very far.  I never enjoyed walking, but it wasn’t painful until this little problem.  This weekend, Jean finally dragged me to a shoe store/foot specialty shop (La Foot in Berkeley…  They have a cute slogan: “Tired of the agony of deFeet?  Experience the glory of La Foot!”)  I got some new shoes with very rigid soles, arch support inserts, and a little pad to insulate the sore spot on my foot.  This is all in the blog because now I can walk relatively normal distances, so Charlie and I have taken to spending a lot of time in local parks.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Charlie has been tentative about moving around in grass.  I think it was because he wasn’t sure if it would hurt (grass is very pointy!) and he hadn’t much experience with it.  It was really hot today, so we spent a couple hours on the grass in the shade, waiting for the sun to dip enough for the swings to be in the shade (the swings are the big ticket item for Charlie…  everything else is just atmosphere).  Charlie learned the following about grass:

1) Despite its appearance, when he puts his weight on grass, it feels soft like the carpet in his play area at home

2) Unlike carpet, if he grabs a handful of grass, he can rip it right out! (this was very exciting for him…  don’t think he hasn’t tried his damnedest with the carpet.)

3) Once he’s obtained a handful of grass, he can eat it… not surprisingly, this discovery came maybe 2-3 seconds after the previous one.

4) Grass doesn’t taste very good…  this discovery came, unexpectedly, NOT right after the previous one, but about three tries (mouthfuls) later.  Maybe he thought the first two were just bad batches…  I feel a little guilty that the only reason I let him keep trying it was that his facial expression was incredibly cute all three times.

Anyway, in case you were wondering, these are the principle lessons of Grass 101, as far as I can tell.  If further lessons are discovered, I will certainly post them.

Charlie’s crawling!

It’s official, Charlie is crawling.  He is wobbly, and doesn’t get his knees under him, but he is crawling well enough that even somebody who wasn’t his parent would say so.  He can go where he wants to in a (relatively) straight line.  I spent an hour this afternoon constructing block towers all over his play mat, and as soon as they got more than about two blocks high, he would motor over and knock them down.  It is amazing how quickly babies develop their body coordination.

We went to a new park today, where Charlie took his first outdoor nap.  There is a park near our house that is very sunny, but today we went to a different park that has shade.  Charlie laid on my chest and we just fell asleep looking at the sky.  Though Charlie enjoyed the grass, and picking up (and trying to eat) every leaf he could get his hands on, he would not crawl.  He would roll over onto his stomach, put his hands down, and lift his head up, but then when he lifted his hand to start to crawl, he held it tentatively over the grass spot where he would put it if he were going to move forward.  All I could think of is that, if you’re unfamiliar with grass, it probably looks like a very bad place to press down the palm of your hand.  I tried taking his hand and pressing it down, so he could feel that the grass was soft, but he started crying, so we gave up.  We will be working on getting comfortable with grass over the next few days.

Look, ma, no hands!

July 9

Well, nobody else’s hands, anyway.  The picture pretty much tells the story, but to fully appreciate the significance , you have to be aware that Jean was not home at the time, which means that Charlie was able to stand at his play table stably enough that I felt comfortable moving away from him, and for long enough that I had time to snap the photos.  He usually stands on his tip-toes, but he is slowly beginning to get comfortable putting his heels down.

Pillow Time

This post and a few that follow it were written over the last couple weeks, and not posted.

July 2

Charlie is just about ready to crawl anytime now.  Of course, I can no longer count how many times we’ve thought “Charlie is about to <fill in the blank>” and then — pfft — nothing comes of it.

Anyway, he gets onto his belly, and then he gets his butt up in the air so he is on all fours, then he rocks back and forth…  then he falls over.  I was worried about negative reinforcement (he often falls forward and bonks his head), so I started letting him practice on our bed.  Then I read that getting on all fours and rocking is a very common step in learning to crawl, so I wasn’t worried anymore, but during the interim crawling-in-bed stage, “Pillow Time” developed.  When lying on his back in bed, Charlie absolutely loves being pummeled with pillows!  When you hold a pillow over him in position to completely cover him (we have “body” pillows that are literally bigger than Charlie), he starts kicking and screaming (in a good way) and raises his hands in the air like he is a mothership guiding the pillow home.  Then when you actually drop the pillow , he wraps his hands as far around it as he can and practically smothers himself, giggling the whole time.  I’m not sure I’m happy about it, but he’s clearly inherited his Dad’s love of lounging around in bed.