Unsolved mysteries...solved!

Man, the December blogathon has still got me blogged out.

About three nights ago, when Leo cried to let us know that he'd gotten up in the night, we noticed when we picked him up that he wasn't where we had left him. It seems that at some point, Leo figured out how to move forward on his tummy. Which is strange, because we'd never seen him do it in the daytime. I'd put him on his tummy and he'd lift his head and then do normal stationary baby things. No crawling. Then, in the night, forward movement. In fact, we decided to make sure that when we put him to bed that his feet were essentially at the end of the crib to maximize the time it would take him to get to the other end. This didn't end up changing his new (bad) pattern though...just when we thought we were clever! So this crawling stuff ended up being a bit of a urbabyan legend.

Tonight has not been a good night for Leo in terms of getting to sleep. This post will be a bit misleading to you out there, given that it was started after midnight and thus will be dated the day after the sleep battle began so please note that I'm referring to Sunday night. Recently, Leo has taken very well to going to sleep on his tummy, rarely requiring more than one trip to the crib to start his sleep. Tonight, it was back up to five. For many days now, he's been exhibiting all the signs of a teething baby (mega drool, bad sleep, all grabbed items inserted directly in the mouth, occasional jags of inconsolability, etc.) so we think that this has come to a head tonight. In the end, we gave Leo his first (in a long time? ever? I can't remember...) shot of Advil and I'm pretty sure he'll be out for a few hours as a result. I'm glad - Holly needs a break. In any case, I've checked the blog and Max's first tooth came in at 7.5 months. I'm hoping that this is the real deal and not a "teeth moving but not breaking through" false alarm. Then again, it could also be a growth spurt I suppose. Maybe a combination.

In any case, the one good thing that the multiple failures to get Leo to sleep have provided to us is some insight into the whole crawling thing. It seems that when Leo stirs from sleep while on his front, he scrunches up at the waist, bringing his legs up and sticking his bum in the air. Then, when he flattens out again, his knees gain traction and his top half shoots forward. Repeat. Given that the crib is only 2 Leos long, it doesn't take long for the little guy to run up against the end. It was suggested to throw a bumper pad on the end of the crib to lessen the impact, but I'm not sure if Leo's up by the time he gets to the end of the crib (which would render the pad moot) or not. Anyway, we'll just have to wait to see how things develop.