Line of Demarcation

If there's one thing Rachel's learned about crawling it's that it's a school of hard knocks. Let's just say that she won't go onto the wood floor for anything. Now that she can get around, she'll often crawl right up to the edge of the carpet and slap the wood floor with her hands, kind of how she splashes in the bathtub. But she won't crawl out onto it. She has face planted one time too many to try risking it on a hard surface.

So the line between the carpet and the wood floor kind of acts as a natural baby barrier.

When I'm working at the computer or in the kitchen and Rachel wants to visit me she'll crawl right up to the "line of demarcation" and call out to me until I go get her.

Waiting patiently

Andrew decided to tease her this evening and dangled his keys over the wood floor. Rachel loves keys and she wanted them so she crawled out as far as she could without technically being on the wood floor. It wasn't until she was stretched so far out that she realized there was no way she could recover without having to drop to the floor on her tummy, something she wasn't about to do.


So she panicked and started calling out to me from across the room, all the while holding her position. I wasn't about to go rescue her because Andrew was standing right there and he was the one who helped her get into this predicament. He wasn't about to rescue her because he was enjoying himself far too much.


She held this position for about five minutes before Andrew finally helped her back onto the carpet. Doesn't she look like she's doing pushups?

Please, daddy, please!

Come to think of it, she'd be really great at the lava game we'd always play as children, throwing pillows and things on the ground so we could cross the room without touching the ground. We'll have to teach her that game in a few years.

Anyway, Andrew continued to taunt Rachel about the wood floor, spurred on by her fear. He put her down on her hands and knees right in the middle of the floor and she immediately pushed up onto her hands and feet and wouldn't move anywhere.


As a final test of her boundaries we put a mat down right next to the carpet to see if she would crawl onto that. Andrew dangled his keys at her (like she's a cat or something) and she crawled cautiously to the edge of the floor and reached one hand onto the mat. After giving it a good feel, and deciding that its texture met her standards, she ventured out to retrieve the keys.


I wonder how she'll handle being outside once it's warm enough...grass, cement, dirt...those are all kind of scary.