I got to watch little EC playing a new fun game today. Sitting in her little play area, she and found yourself a sock, and an overturned plastic box that we use for keeping toys organized. (Clearly, the toys were not so well organized today.) I watched her as she figured out that she could put the sock on top of the box, and take it off. And then she would put the sock back on top of the box, and then take it off. She kept doing this for quite some time, with more or fewer flourishes involved. Sometimes she would place the sock gently on the box; other time she would toss the sock on to the box. But clearly, she was having a good time practicing a new skill, and a new fun game.

In other news, she started crawling the day after her 9th month. I suspect that within a week we will lose containment. 

Little EC has surprised me this week.

I’ve mentioned in the past her pattern for developing new skills: one day, she randomly does something neat, like rolling over, or sitting up for an extended period. Then several weeks pass while she tries to figure out how she did that in the first place, and a month or a month and a half later, she starts to reliably do that thing like she means it.

At the beginning of this week, she sat up by herself for the first time. Starting from her back, she would roll over to her side, toss her legs out in front of her, and push up with the arm that is still on the ground. And presto, she’s up. Seeing that on Saturday, I figured that we’d start seeing it reliably sometime in mid-July.

I’ve been seeing it reliably for days now. She’s figured it out, and when she wants to sit up, she sits up. Sometimes she doesn’t quite make it, sometimes she falls right back over. Sometimes I’m changing her diaper and I do everything I can to keep her down (but that’s when she most reliably succeeds, of course). But she skipped the weeks-long hiatus that’s supposed to happen.

Maybe this is a fluke. Or maybe, she has made great progress in learning how to learn, and has developed greater facility in analyzing her own actions. If that’s the case, then I suspect we could be seeing faster progress in mastering new skills.

Already, she is pushing herself up onto her knees, or moving onto her knees from a sitting position. How much longer could it be before one hand moves in front of the other, and she really gets moving?