Stand Up, Baby, Stand Up!

Alright alright. As you can see, Ara isn't exactly standing up On Her Own. But this is her current latest trick: Fussing irritatedly while (seemingly) comfortably seated, and then, using my (or Ryan's or May's) hands for balance (and balance alone! I swear!), hoisting herself into a standing position. Her look once she gets to the top is serious and concentrated, but the ceasation of fussing indicates a mood-improvement at the very least. She LOVES it up there!! Her version of standing is quite hilarious though - it's like she's not quite sure how to use her feet for all this. As you can see (shown on right), her feet are often oddly positioned so that she's almost standing on their tops, and her toes are kind of "engaged" during the whole affair. And all this despite May's encouragement and insistent cries of "Flat your Feet! FLAT YOUR FEET!!!" While this all seems quite exciting, and further convinces us that Ara is a Super Baby, it is also somewhat worrisome. It suggests that Ara will, indeed, walk before she can crawl. This is completely our fault. ALL the good parenting books have the slogan "Back to Sleep; Tummy to Play" emblazoned on them. Otherwise, they say, babies will balk at the tummy position, and will never actually get the hang of crawling! They'll just do what Ara is doing, which is start sitting, then standing, then walking! Of course, as someone with a mile-wide competitive streak, this seemed good to me! What a thing to be able to say about your kid, while beaming with sinful pride? Well, that was my attitude until Grandma-Syd pointed out that the right-left coordination involved in learning to crawl was actually a pretty important developmental step. Of course, the books don't mention that. But unless you're putting your child at risk by slathering her nails with lead paint, they don't see very many things as real threats developmentally. I had to admit, upon reflection, that crawling did seem like a nice thing to be able to do. And THEN I recalled the Poisonwood Bible, in which a twin has psychologically-induced paralysis due to, and listen closely here people, Never Having Crawled As A Child! So, I recognize that Barbara Kingsolver isn't the authority on child development, even if the book DID manage to make it onto Opera's book list. But it still kind of has me spooked. So why have we not been giving our child the chance to go through this important developmental phase? Well ... simply put .. she really HATES being on her tummy! At all! Ever!! It's not that she's not able to do good stuff when she's down there. She can do the mini-pushups that are required for her age (even though she refused to demonstrate this while on display for the pediatrician. Performance anxiety??) and can heave her head and chest to a 45-degree angle with the floor. But the whole time she's doing it she's SCREAMING! And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of hearing Ara in full voice, this girl can BELT. I swear, people in Shanghai know when tummy time has come around. So, maybe we'll stuff our ears with cotton, and try to get her more into tummy time. But for now, it's quiet standing room only!!