No! No, he's not walking! And that is perfectly okay. I rather enjoy not having to chase him all over the place yet (Although, as the title to this post may suggest, I think my days of not having to worry about that may be ending in an unexpected way). Keeping up with his super crawler speed is perfectly alright with me. At first when people started asking, I started to worry that there was something actually wrong, especially since some people followed up my reply with a "Really?! Huh, well, hopefully everything's okay..." (give me a break here - I'm pretty laid back for the most part, but sometimes that nervous first time mother takes over). Then I realized that he really just has no interest in it. He can do it - he's done it essentially on his own already several times (he likes to hold my pant leg or finger, but he's really doing all the work). But, for the most part, he is just content to transport himself around in other ways. For instance, he's what I call a "knee-walker", and the way he looks when he's doing it reminds me of Johnny 5 (I realize I may be dating myself here) or Wall-E in that new Pixar movie.
I mean, look at this photo and tell me you don't see the similarity (granted, those robots have nothing on my cute little man's adorableness!):
He will sit on his knees, just like this all the time, and then, when he wants to go somewhere, he just starts walking along on his knees, just like that. Look ma! No hands! It has to be one of the cutest things I have ever seen. I figured that when he wanted to carry things with him like his milk or the telephone, he would learn to walk, but knee-walking gives him the use of his hands and fulfills his need to carry something and move at the same time. Overall it seems to be a very useful form of transportation for him. Needless to say, I am relieved it is summertime since he had just worn out the knees in the only pair of jeans I had for him, and was working on holes in most of his other pants.
Well, speaking of getting around he also likes to climb... and climb... and climb. I thought this was incredibly fun and exciting when he first learned to get up on the couch and the ottoman all by himself. See, here he is on the couch enjoying his other favorite pastime, talking on the phone (and while we're on the subject, he really does talk by the way - most of the time it sounds like he is saying "hi", "wow" and "pickle" intermixed with goos, gaas and raspberries. His expressions are great too - he looks so serious when he's listening!).Anyway, as I said before, I thought the climbing was adorable at first. That was until I realized that Hunter really does love to climb - as high as he can go. His amazing flexibility, nimble little body and incredible strength are incredibly useful to him in his climbing endeavors. Sometimes I really do believe that he is made of rubber. Here is one of his new climbing places:
He stood up there for about six or seven minutes before attempting to get up onto the very top of the armchair, which I wasn't about to allow. I mean, the armchair rocks for goodness sake! Does that deter him - hmm... no, no it does not. Well, today being the first day that he actually climbed up on my desk all by himself, I felt I should write about the moment. Not only did he get up on the desk by himself, but he quickly headed for the bookcase on my desk as if he was going to figure out a way to get up that too. This development takes me into a whole new realm of baby proofing. I'm not even quite sure what the next steps should be. Of course, now that he knows he can climb up to high places, that is pretty much all he wants to do. Who needs to walk when you can climb?! I think all those bananas are nourishing my little guy's inner monkey.
