[Continued from 6.6.99] …Mostly you want to play with them, but if you’re tired, you’ll now sometimes sit right through and, with Big Red Barn, you seem to recognize the dog and cat (your favorite animals) on the page that describes them (though we have to substitute “woof woof” for the book’s “bow wow”), placing your hand, for instance, on top of the dog.

More milestones: a second (bottom) tooth and now a third, just barely visible up top. Lots, even in the space of a week, more mobility. Something like crawling up on all fours, sometimes [drawing] like this, and sometimes [drawing] on your knees. If the former case you collapse forward, back on to your stomach [drawing], having gained a few inches. In the latter, though you still have the sense of sequencing your movements, you tend to get at least 3 limbs moved forward, sometimes rolling on a still-folded fourth (leg) along. Then, between rolling and what seems eventually to be willing yourself forward, you get to your objective…

[Dad]

…but you do persevere, especially after a ball. You have a large orange one and a small blue one. Both have a tendency to roll away at the first touch following an arduous trek, but you don’t seem to mind – I guess that’s the game. You don’t really do much with the balls when you do secure them & chasing them does seem more satisfying. The mobility is such serendipitious [sic] learning & the possibility of discovering a key move this way is obviously rare. At this time your crawl involves drawing your left leg up in a right-angle configuration as if you were going to sit and then lurching forward by extending the right leg back and arms forward. It works, but poorly. I tried to “walk” you through the correct steps with hand-over-hand, but it just pissed you off. I think the first crawl is on tape.