Part 13

In this fortnight, which brought our baby to eight months old, the rolling grew very rapid and free. She would now roll over and over in the same direction, not to get anywhere in particular (she never learned to use rolling for that purpose), but just for fun. She varied the exercise with the most lively kicking--heels raised in air and brought down together with astonishing vigor and zest; and with twisting about and getting on hands and knees, or even on hands and feet, prattling joyously, and having a beautiful time all by herself, for as long as the authorities would leave her alone. I have no note or memory that she ever tired of it, or asked for attention or change; it was always some one else who interfered, because meal-time or nap-time or something had come.

In the last week of the month she learned to raise herself to a sitting position; and as she could now sit up or lie down at will, she tumbled about the floor with still more variety and enjoyment. In the same week she began to pull herself daily quite to her feet in the tub. It was an ordinary wooden wash-tub which was bridging the interval between her own outgrown one and the grown-up bath-tub; and she would stand, leaning her weight partly on her hands, on the edge of the tub, with her feet planted wide apart, quite on the opposite side, giving her a pretty secure base.

In this fortnight the baby’s understanding of us and feeling of nearness to us were noticeably greater. Her attachment to her favorites was striking. She would cling to us with all the strength of her little arms, sometimes pressing her lips against our faces in a primitive sort of kiss. Her desire for our attention was intense--little arms stretched out, face full of desire, while she uttered urgent cries. Now and then she was entirely unwilling to eat a meal till the person she had set her heart on at the moment had yielded to her pleading, and come to sit close beside her, for company.

She understood one or two little directions--“by-by,” and “patacake”; or, at least, associated them with the acts. She had some idea of what “No, no!” meant, and she knew perfectly that she must not keep paper or flower petals in her mouth, and after biting off a bit would put out her tongue, laughing, to have the forbidden scrap removed. And one day when I said to her, “Don’t you want to come to aunty?” without any gesture, she surprised me by leaning forward and putting out her hands to me, exactly as if I had reached my arms out for her. She could not have understood the whole question, for she hardly understood words at all at the time; but she must have made out “come,” and, putting it with “aunty,” which she had known for weeks, got at my meaning.

On the day she was eight months old, at last, the baby half sprawled, half crept, forward to get something. The early, aimless stages of locomotion were over, and she was about to start in in good earnest to learn to creep and to stand.

CREEPING AND STANDING

Now, at eight months old, began a fortnight of rapid development in movements, all branching out from the position on hands and knees which the baby often took as she sprawled on the floor.

First she hit on two ways of sitting up, beginning on hands and knees. One of them, in fact, had appeared in the last days of the preceding month. She would tilt over sidewise till she was half sitting, leaning on one hand, then straighten up, raising the hand--and there you are, sitting. The other way, a few days later, was to begin as before on hands and knees, separate the knees, and lift herself over backward till she was sitting, turning the legs out at the knee. No grown person but a contortionist could do it, for our hips have not enough play in the socket to carry the movement through the last inch or two; but babies’ joints are flexible. This became our baby’s regular method, and the position it left her in--legs spread out before her, bent directly out at the knee--was her every-day one for many months. Most babies, I believe, sit monkey fashion--legs straight, with soles turned in.

Watching carefully, we were sure that the baby did not at first use either method intelligently; she wanted to sit up, and shifted and lifted her body, scolding with impatience, and never knowing whether she would bring up in the desired position or not, till she found herself by luck where she wanted to be. In a few days, however, the right movements were sifted out from the useless ones, and she sat up and lay down at will.

In the same early days of the ninth month, another movement came of experimenting while on hands and knees--a backward creeping, pushing with the hands. The baby at once tried to utilize it to get to people and things, and it was funny to hear her chattering with displeasure as she found herself borne off the other way--backing sometimes into the wall, and pushing helplessly against it, like a little locomotive that had accidentally got reversed. She soon gave up trying to get anywhere by this “craw-fishing,” however, and then she enjoyed it, merely as movement.

The only reason I have heard suggested for this curious back-action creeping (which is not uncommon just before real creeping) is that the baby’s arms are stronger than the legs, and as a pushing movement with them is more natural than a stepping one, a backward impulse is given, which the baby, as a rule, resents with comical displeasure.

Next, from hands and knees the baby learned to rise to hands and feet; to kneel, and then to sit back on her heels; and to make sundry variations on these positions, such as kneeling on one knee and one foot, or sitting on one heel, with the other foot thrust out sidewise, propping her.

In spite of two or three chance forward steps, she was eight and a half months old before she hit at last on real creeping; then one day I saw her several times creep forward a foot or two, and presently she was rolling an orange about and creeping after it. I tried in vain to lure her more than a couple of feet, to come to me or to get a plaything; she would creep a step or two, then sit back on her heels and call me to take her. Until almost the end of this month, indeed, she would creep for but very short distances, and always to reach something, not for pleasure in the movement.

But while she fumbled in such chance fashion towards creeping, she was carried on towards standing by strong and evident instinct. She pulled herself up daily, not to reach anything, but from an overwhelming desire to get to her feet; and when she found herself on them she rejoiced and triumphed. At this stage she almost invariably used a low object to pull up by, so that she could lean over it, propping her weight with her hands--or with one hand, as she grew more confident. It was after the middle of the month that she first drew herself up, her knees shaking, by a chair, to reach a favorite plaything; but thereafter chairs became her great “stand by,” in a very literal sense.

In kneeling, too, she showed joy. She could not keep her balance on her knees for more than a few seconds, but while she did she exulted in the exploit, and patted and waved her hands in glee. Aside from standing and kneeling, her advances in movement were made with a curious lack of intelligent consciousness of what she was about, as well as of clear, compelling instinct. She seemed to progress by blind experimenting, selecting gradually out of a medley of others the acts and positions that were most useful and best fitted to the structure of her joints and muscles.

Many babies before this stage show the walking instinct quite clearly. If they are held from above, so that their soles press lightly on a flat surface, the legs will begin to make good stepping movements. Our baby had failed to make this response hitherto; in this fortnight, however, it appeared, very imperfectly and irregularly, but steadily better; and with another week she took great delight in the exercise.

Amid all these new movements, rolling rapidly declined and disappeared. The baby was absorbed in her new powers, and during the latter half of the month her joy in them was exquisite. She was a thing to remember for a lifetime as she played on a quilt spread on the lawn in the hot June days--sitting and looking about her with laughter and ejaculations of pleasure, gazing up with wonder and interest at the branches swaying in the warm breeze, watching the dog, creeping about and examining the grass with grave attention, pulling to her feet at our knees as we sat by with our reading and sewing. And when we let her take the benefit of the warm weather, and creep about the floor stripped to the inmost layer of garments, arms and legs bare, she was at the height of joy. She would go from one position to another, sitting and kneeling, tumbling and scrambling and creeping about in endless content.

That she paid her price for all this in increased knowledge of pain I hardly need say. From the time she began to roll freely, she had collided with table legs and the like; and from then until she could walk, bumps and scratches and pinches were almost daily experiences. Her early creeping was so awkward that she would lose her footing, so to speak, and come down hard on her face, and her later and quicker creeping brought collisions; in standing by chairs she would lose hold and topple over; and in investigating rockers, window blinds, lids, and all manner of things, she did not fail to get her fingers hurt now and then, in spite of all vigilance.

In the main, she was surprisingly indifferent to these mishaps; even when the blow had reddened the skin, she would look sober only a minute, then, at a laugh and encouraging word, would smile and go on with her play. This was doubtless partly temperament: babies cry with nervous fright more than with the actual pain of a bump, and she was a baby of tranquil nerves. But her skin sensitiveness was probably still low.

With experience of pain, either her sensitiveness or her timidity grew, and she made more fuss than she did at first; and over some especially severe hurts she screamed with lusty good-will. Still, it was noticeable on the whole how little she was troubled in learning to balance and move about by the pains that strewed the way; and this, I think, must be the normal condition with healthy children.

I have spoken just now of the pride and joy that were shown over kneeling and standing. The joy, of course, was an old story: we have seen that every stage of advancing power had been accompanied by lively pleasure. But this feeling of pride, this exultation in herself as actor, was a new emotion, and quite characteristic of the higher type of self-consciousness the baby had entered on at about seven months old, as I have already related. In going through her little hand movements, too, she showed much consciousness and pride, looking prettily into our faces for approval, as she patted or waved her hands.

As the baby now approached nine months old, there was an indescribable dawning appearance of comprehension about her--an air of understanding her surroundings and getting into touch with our minds. She watched our movements not merely with curiosity, but with an apparent attempt to interpret them, sometimes with a curious, puzzled drawing of the mouth that looked like mental effort. Many things she did interpret perfectly well: for instance, if I picked a rose and held it up, smiling, she knew that it was for her, and broke into jubilation accordingly. She volunteered to play peekaboo from early in the month, holding up a cloth, basket lid, or whatever she had at hand, before her face, and peeping out with smiles. She made intelligent little adaptations in her own actions, such as pulling at the tablecloth to bring to her a paper that lay on it.

She seemed, by the latter part of the month, to understand vaguely a good deal that was said to her, when it was accompanied with a gesture. If I said, “Kiss aunty,” and offered my cheek, she would press her lips against it. She would look around to see if her mother shook her head with “No, no!” when she crept up to pull at the books on a low shelf. Her little list of accomplishments, waving and patting her hands, and so on, she would go through at the mere word, without any gesture.

One important development in the latter part of the month was a little imitative cry, something like mewing, associated with the cats--important because of its bearing on the beginnings of language. It has long been a dispute whether language began with imitation of the sounds of nature, or with spontaneous ejaculations--“the bow-wow theory and the pooh-pooh theory,” as they were scoffingly nicknamed early in the course of the discussion. Our baby may seem to have given the weight of her authority to the bow-wow theory, for this mewing cry did in fact slowly develop months later into a name for “cat,” and might be called the first remote foreshadowing of a spoken word. But on the whole, with her and with other babies, the early stages of speech confirm the best recent opinion--namely, that language is a complex product, into which both imitation and ejaculation enter, with perhaps still other elements.

About a week before the baby was nine months old, some one looked up from dinner and saw her standing by a lounge, steadied only by one hand pressed against it, while she waved the other in exultant joy. Her father sprang and caught her as she toppled, then set her on her feet within the circuit of his arms, but without support, for a few seconds. Her legs shook, but she stood without fear, in high delight.

After this, her standing at chairs grew rapidly freer and bolder, and the support she needed was daily less. At nine months old, she was absorbed in the desire to stand. She would hold on with one hand and lean down to pick up things with confidence and freedom. In the first week of the tenth month, she even liked to pull herself up to her feet, then deliberately let go, come down sitting with a thud, and look up laughing and triumphant. She evidently thought the coming down quite as fine an exploit as the getting up.

By this time she crept freely and rapidly, laughing with pleasure as she did so. If she was laid on a blanket on the lawn, she no longer tumbled about contentedly within its area, but struck off across the grass, stopping to investigate carefully any plant or fallen leaf she came across. The medley of positions and movements had disappeared, and creeping and standing, as the fittest, had survived.

Within a week after she was nine months old, the baby began to get up to her feet by low objects, and then, instead of stooping over them, to abandon all support, straighten up, and stand alone for several seconds, greatly pleased with herself. Next she could stand a minute at a time, with such slight support as a fold of a gown in her hand, or in a corner, steadied only by her shoulders against the wall. She no longer plumped down to the floor, but lowered herself cleverly--once (in the second week of the month) without any support at all, having absent-mindedly let go of the chair. In a few days more, it was not uncommon for her to forget to hold on, and to stand a few seconds alone by a chair; and if she was at some one’s knee, where she felt more confidence, she would let go on purpose, and try deliberately to stand alone.