I guess that title is a little misleading. Only in as much as I am not currently walking; nor have I ever walked. I don’t mean with regularity. I mean ever. What I was getting at in the title to this post was that it really takes some determination to keep up with Emmett, and to keep my toys from Emmett. He is moving. A lot. And fairly quickly too. So I have to move fast to keep up.
I am still working on crawling. I am army crawling like a champ. (Or as Mom likes to call it Roomba-ing because I inadvertently vacuum the floor when I pull myself across it.) And I am now getting much better at pulling my knees underneath me and rocking forward and back. But still no crawling. Which only means that I have to work that much harder to keep up with Chocolate Thunder (see Emmett’s blog if that’s the first time you’ve heard that name).
I will literally be following him from one room into another, when he decides-with Emmett’s customary je ne sais quois-to change direction and turn around. This is a bit disheartening for me. I work very hard to pull myself from one room into another only to see Emmett decide that it is, in fact, another room that is his final destination. Sometimes it just gets to be too much and I just lie there with my head on the ground. But only for a moment. Then I remember that I am White Lightening and I can do anything! (Except walk-yet.) So then I just turn around and follow Emmett to infinity and beyond…
But sometimes infinity means that he’s working hard to tire me out so that he can steal my toys. I have drawn a line in the sand when it comes to outright theft. If I have something in my hands, that is to say either being held by me or on my person, I expect that it will remain there. Perhaps I will entertain the idea of a trade. Give me something good and I may be persuaded to give up my toy in return. But for Emmett to just come up and try to yank my toy away? I will not stand for that.
To that end, I recently worked on my grip strength. And with the concept of retaliation. Both have helped me immensely. The grip strength has even surprised Emmett. When I crawl up to him when he is having a bottle and I try to wrest it from him, he is, I feel comfortable saying, shocked. Unfortunately he has taken to defending himself by hitting me on the head with whatever else he is holding. (I am currently searching for a solution to that problem. Stay tuned.) But I retaliate when he is otherwise engaged, then I crawl up to him and try to pull his hair. All’s fair… Right?
I would like to end this post by pointing out that I really learned all of these tactics from Emmett. I hesitate to say that, if asked, he would say that he was secretly proud of me. But I think that if he knew that I thought that, he would probably just hit me on the head with whatever he was currently holding.
Riley out.
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