She's on the move!

Over the last couple weeks, Lauren has perfected her crawl. She's been scooting and pivoting, rolling and reaching for the last two months. Like her brothers were, she is an especially chubby baby and I've come to appreciate how strong she must be to move her (not so) little body. So she's crawling at 9.5 months, which  splits the difference between Tobin (8.5 months) and Evan (10.5 months) for achieving this milestone. There is a direct correlation with their respective weights and crawling ages. Lauren is the happy medium between her two brothers in that measure as well, weighing slightly more than Tobin did at this age. I could extend this further and predict she will walk at 16 months, compared with Tobin's 15 months and Evan's 17 months. But then I wonder if the desire to keep up with two busy brothers might make her an earlier walker. And correlation does not equal causation, or something like that.

Of course, Lauren crawling is a game changer. I can't just plop her down in the living room with one of her brothers and some toys and move from room to room, peeking in to find her basically where I left her. Nor can I rely on her to stay under my feet playing in the kitchen when I need to be in there. Apparently, she has places to go. The other night I was trying to load the dishwasher right after supper and kept Lauren in the kitchen with me while Matt took the boys to take a bath. I set her up with the refrigerator magnets and a couple of bowls, which usually keep her occupied for a while. But she heard the bath water running and I turned around just in time to see her little bottom headed down the hall. I followed her and sure enough, she crawled right into the bathroom (covering an approximate 10-yard distance in our cozy home), where Matt swooned over how adorable she was and scooped her up, letting her sit on his lap so she could watch the boys in the tub for a while. More and more frequently, I'm finding her heading down the same hallway to find me in the bedroom when I'm running back and forth trying to get everyone ready in the morning. She has such a proud, happy look on her face when she "finds" me. She knows what she wants and, now, how to get there.

I've been through this twice before but it's still just as remarkable to see this baby crawling. As the third kid, she has a lot of chaos--toys and big brothers everywhere!--to crawl over and around but it's all totally normal to her. (You'll see Tobin's feet in this video; he's playing a video game--hence, his sound effects.)

And while I'm sharing the cuteness of Lauren crawling, I'll throw in a bonus video Matt took of her playing basketball. See what I mean about her trying to keep up with her brothers? She has watched them play hours of basketball and she seems to be getting the hang of it just fine--with a little help from Evan, of course.