Motivation

We've now learned that Baby Kate is motivated by one of the same fundamental motivations that has been spurring man to action since the dawn of time: the desire to see a critic eat his or her words.

Devoted Wife has been hassling me lately for my "criticisms" of Baby Kate's crawling ability (or lack thereof). Until very recently, when placed on her stomach in view of an object she wanted, Kate would attempt to crawl but would find herself moving away from her goal as she pushed herself backward with her hands. She had the strength to get to her hands and knees, but no coordination to control the direction of her movement.

Devoted Wife tried to convince me that Kate was doing advanced yoga moves, but I knew the truth: she was a lousy crawler. I started telling people Kate was in the "remedial crawling class." Devoted Wife didn't like my comments and told me that I was going to hurt Kate's feelings.

Well, Kate must have heard me. But she proved she was no shrinking violet.

A few days after I started talking about her remedial class, she'd had enough of dad's abuse and decided it was time to start crawling. On a field trip to my office, she impressed my co-workers with her first actual motion forward. By the next day she was able to consistently army-crawl forward, and the day after that she pretty much had it down:

And by the day after that (yesterday) she was folding origami swans, diagramming sentences and popping and locking while watching "So You Think You Can Dance!" It's amazing how quickly children pick things up.

It's good to know that we can bring out the best in Kate with some simple criticism and humiliation. I learned the eternal truth of that principle of motivation in little league football. Once she heard my criticism, she set out to prove that her old man was wrong and that he was an old windbag who couldn't crawl very far himself.

She was apparently right on both accounts. Nice work, Kate!