Chango UNLEASHED

crawling position and.... GO!

Benji's inner monkey has been unleashed on the Hackett household... after weeks and weeks of almost-almost-almost crawling, he is finally truly moving forward!

Yesterday (right before Clay got home from being out of town for two days) he crawled forward several feet. Then Clay was there to witness the wonderful (and somehow terrible) crawling expeditions later that day.

Since then I've only seen Ben crawl backwards a couple of times, and perhaps he meant to go backwards anyway.

This morning we did a pretty thorough baby-proofing of the study (bundling up electrical cords and getting them off the floor, etc.). We've also put baby gates at several important junctures throughout the house, which means Clay and I are going to get more high-stepping exercise from now on. Our poor cats are confused because I've had to move their food and water yet again, but as the video below shows, they were about to have a new bowl-mate otherwise.

Even though the vacuum cleaner terrifies Ben, I may just have to let him scream it out and vacuum the house more often. Because now no tracked-in-leaf, no bit of dust, nor tiny kitty litter piece is safe from his not-so-expert newly mobile pincer grasp. Just now I turned around from typing and he was closely examining a small ball of nameless floor fuzz. I'm sure it was destined for his mouth had I not denied him his new toy.

I know pretty soon I may be very tired of his new mobility, but right now he just seems so much less frustrated. It's great to see him see something he wants and have the capability to just go for it.

Normally I don't do a video dump, but here are several that show his new *mad* skills.