Not a Crawler

The average baby starts crawling somewhere around 8-10 months but Anders has shown no real sign of crawling yet. I haven't really been concerned as I know that there is quite a bit of variation in each baby's time table, and he continues to show lots of development in other areas. And I have to admit I've enjoyed knowing that when I put him down somewhere, I can come back later and he'll still be there.

He has become an expert spinner, though. He spins counter-clockwise as he pivots about his left hand. Only very occasionally does he spin in the other direction. For the past couple of weeks, he has been able to move about the room by spinning and drifting a little with each revolution.

He'll also make a move for a toy by diving. He starts seated, then goes to a crawl-like position, uses his legs to push himself forward into a dive, lands on his stomach, grabs for the toy, rolls over to his back, and then sits back up. Not terribly efficient, but it usually works.

Several people (both grandfathers, daycare friend Tammy, and others) have tried to coach Anders in crawling. They'll demonstrate crawling to him and then prop him up on his knees and try to move his legs for him. But as soon as the propping stops, Anders flattens out to his stomach, rolls over to his back, and then sits up.

But this week he has made some significant progress. He's not crawling, but he has developed a "scoot". One leg (left) is used to prop up his body while the other leg (right) is used to scoot him forward. It's not a very fast way to get around but he is now officially mobile.

This video demonstrated his new technique, as well as his spinning and love of phones.

Watch this video on YouTube
or in the original blog post

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket

Date: August 28, 2009

Still Laughing

Anders still has laughing fits. This day, he sneezed and then I imitated the sound. Apparently, this was hilarious.

Watch this video on YouTube or
in the original blog post

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket

Date: August 17, 2009

Bad Hips

As far as hips go, we are hoping that Anders inherited his hip genes from the Ilvedsons (Corinne's father's side) and the Jurmans (Mike's mother's side). Mike's dad is scheduled to have his 2nd hip replaced on August 26th. He had his first hip replaced a few years ago. Corinne's maternal grandmother had one of her hips replaced. And on August 7th, Corinne's mother had her first hip replaced.

So, we all headed up to Seattle for the weekend to check on Corinne's mom Donna who is staying with the excellent Nurse Joie while she recovers. My intention was to help out, but with Anders around I think it ends up as a net zero gain. I believe the only benefit we provided was that Anders is a good distraction from the boredom of surgery recovery.

One of our typical activities during visits is to join Aunt Joie on her walks with the dog(s). Aunt Joie doesn't have any dogs of her own anymore but has a couple of grand-dogs and a few other surrogate pets that stop by when their parents are busy or out of town. On this trip, the resident dogs were the grand-dogs, Mazzi, Taryn's standard poodle, and Vanna, Tor's Italian Bracco (she points!).

We also enjoyed a pleasant morning with Shane and Andrea at a Seattle coffee shop. Shane played with the wiggle worm the whole time.

As we left for home, Mom was doing quite well getting around slowly with her walker.

- Corinne, Mike, and Anders Rocket

Date: August 16, 2009

Dalys at Timberline Lodge

In keeping with our unofficial every-three-months schedule, my parents flew out to visit us this August. The weather was still pretty hot when they arrived, but we hadn't planned to do anything in particular while they were here, so staying inside most of the time was just fine with us.

The one event that we did plan was a trip to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood. In all the five years we've lived here, we have not once visited there. (Our mountain trips always stopped at Mt Hood Meadows.) Since the 11,000' mountain-top promised to be quite a bit cooler than the 90+ degrees at home, we figured it would be a good place to retreat.

Plus, some of the exterior shots for the movie The Shining were filmed at Timberline. Since my parents had already been to the location on which the inside was based, it seemed justified to finish the job.

Of course, it turned out that the heat wave broke just the day before our trip to Timberline. And when we got up the mountain, the fog got pretty heavy and the temperature was in the 40s! So we stayed inside and didn't get to take the lift. We did enjoy some pretty good food, though.

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders Rocket

Date: August 12, 2009