November 24: Still working on crawling; new carrier

Carter is really starting to be able to move around. It's almost scary, because when I put him down now, he doesn't stay in that spot. He doesn't move fast, but he scoots around on his belly, and is getting more mobile every day. It's forcing me to rethink what I do with him. This morning he did a whole lap around the living room while I watched. It's just a matter of time before he'll be crawling for real, and I'm trying hard to take each moment as it comes. I'm both excited about and dreading his being able to crawl. We have already ordered the baby gates. We may have to put them up when we get back from Thanksgiving! :-P

These pictures were taken yesterday. He made his way over to the empty laundry basket and spent a good ten minutes working on getting it turned over so he could crawl into it.



I was pleasantly surprised by how hard he worked to get to it and into it. He had to move a large toy out of the way and then turn the basket onto its side, and then climb inside. He was very pleased with himself when he accomplished his goal!



I mentioned in a post last week that an old friend of mine, Alexandra Maynard Holland, was in town with her family, and that we met up for lunch. She just sent me some pictures she took that day. Here is Alexandra (or Gags, as she was known when she was a kid) with Carter:



He really took to her kids, Adam and Heather:



I love the fact that he is starting to notice and be interested in other kids. It's funny how they seem to recognize other children as people they should be especially interested in. Carter will react to other children in ways he never would with a strange adult. Here's the three of us:



It's so much fun to get to introduce him to people!

Last night his weight was 20.6 pounds. He plateaued for a little while right before he hit 20 pounds, but he seems to be growing again. And he's getting heavy, too. I love wearing him, but it was starting to be a strain on my shoulders. Even though both the Moby wrap and the ring sling distribute weight pretty well across my shoulders and upper back, it was starting to be too much to do for any length of time.

I decided to look into structured carriers, to see if they would distribute the weight any differently. Today I went to Austin Baby to try out a couple of different structured carriers, and ended up really liking the Beco. As soon as I put it on, I could feel that most of Carter's weight was resting on my hips instead of my shoulders. It was SO much more comfortable!

And so I bought one, just in time for our travel day tomorrow:



It fits very much like a backpack, and is really comfortable. It's really easy to switch him around to riding on my back too, something I hadn't figured out how to do with the Moby:



I've been wanting to figure out how to wear him on my back. It would be cool to be able to wear him while doing something like cooking, where I'd really want him out of the way. Sometimes he wants to be held and I have stuff I have to get done, and it would be cool to just be able to put him on my back. And with the Beco, it's easy! He seemed to like riding around on my back too:



So yay, new carrier! It will get a good try-out this weekend, and hopefully I'll get better at getting him in and out of it quickly. I know it will become second-nature soon enough, but it still feels a bit awkward at the moment. I'm excited that this is going to extend our babywearing, though. I really didn't want to have to stop wearing him, because we both really like it. :-)