And so for your final station stop on this Vermilion Books service, the first birthday party. Change here for Terrible Twos, Potty Training, Playgroup, Sibling Rivalry, Primary School, Pester Power and all stations to Adolescence. Please could passengers remember to take all their belongings with them, including the baby bath I suggested they get and which they now can't get rid of. On behalf of Vermilion Books I would like to thank you for traveling with us today, and we hope to see you again soon. First birthday party. We are now approaching first birthday party.
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| When Do Most Babies Learn How To Crawl |
It has been a long haul. Most passengers preparing to disembark have aged visibly since the start of the journey, and all could do with a good night's sleep. A few will be heading straight for the station bar. And yet it is only 21 months since your baby was conceived, since that tiny sperm with your face crash-landed into your partner's huge angry egg. In the grand sweep of a human lifespan, this is no time at all. But to you, as you plant a single candle in the centre of your firstborn's cake, it feels like the best part of a decade.
Junior should now be crawling, if not walking. Parents can be in a hurry for their progeny to get stomping, but those couple of months on all fours should not be underestimated: they represent a significant stage in Junior's development. Babies cheer up enormously when they start to move. They will try standing up, and may do some nonchalant leaning against chairs, before falling over with the usual clunk. But it is crawling rather than walking that opens the world up to them. They will expend vast efforts trying to crawl.
At first they will be able to crawl backwards. This is progress, although they don't usually want to go that way at all. Imagine that the toy you want is almost within reach, so you try and crawl towards it and end up further away than when you started. Admittedly, most of the rest of life is like this, but it's a hard lesson to learn when you aren't even a year old.
Crawling, though, means power over your own destiny. For the first time in your short life as a baby, you can go where you want. I am writing this sitting in a park. Not far from me a conspicuously foxy young mother has put her infant down on the grass while she talks on her mobile. Infant crawls towards another woman nearby. Foxy young mother doesn't want infant to bother the other woman, so she picks her up and puts her down a little way away, facing the opposite direction. Infant immediately turns round and heads back to the other woman. Foxy young mother gives up and carries on chatting on her phone. Infant and the other woman make friends. Infant has won. She gurgles wit pleasure.
Walking impresses adults more, but to baby, I suspect, it's merely the next stage. (Baby is actually thinking about running when it starts walking. When it learns to run, it will be more concerned with jumping.) At twelve months some babies will be walking, although not all. Boys tend to walk before girls, and younger siblings earlier than firstborns.
Crawling and walking change everything, as you would imagine. From now on you must always strap in Junior to the pushchair to prevent untimely escape attempts (such as when you are halfway across a pedestrian crossing or near the front of a long queue in the Post Office). Indoors, you will be thinking about putting all breakables out of reach. This is easily managed when baby is crawling, a little more challenging when baby is walking, and completely impossible when baby learns to jump and climb all over the place like a gibbon. To find out more, you can check out When Do Most Babies Learn How To Crawl.