Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!

Here are some cute kids enjoying the outdoors before the atmosphere swampified.

Hoo boy. Somehow, despite the gross heat and humidity that had me, momentarily, wistful and eager to drape Christmas garlands around my banister, I have NOT melted into a grumpy puddle. I have come close, though. And by the way, drops of sweat on my forehead should only happen when I am completing athletic tasks, preferably with power and grace. But my infrequent slow-jogs around my neighborhood and disappointing sets of push-ups aren't really training montage material.

The real champion of the week is Rudy. That kid is, officially, crawling. I filmed at least a dozen clips of Rudy: on her hands and knees, rocking, sitting back, getting on all fours again, rocking, laughing and then whimpering, sliding backwards, crying, sitting back, and repeating several versions of that sequence. We went through this for days. My sisters were all, "Let's go, Toot! Start crawling! And get a tooth already!" And I really, truly wanted Rudy to scoot because it's an important milestone and it's super cute. But also, I didn't want her to crawl (yet) because I knew what I would lose. Now she is mobile, and I can no longer plop her in the middle of the kitchen with a pile of toys to chew on while I accomplish my out-of-control (and admirable?) tidying. But really, good for Toot! And here are some clips from her training montage.

Here she is not crawling at my sister's home. Lambie, her special stuffie, is bait.

Here she is not crawling in her own home. Although if you were to challenge the refs' call here, they might concede an inch of forward movement after reviewing the play. First down!

I love that Rudy loves to hear her name chanted. If you do it, she'll stop whatever she's doing to smile at you, bounce around, and (almost) clap. With honest-to-goodness glee. I thought I was getting her all pumped up, but I was really holding her back. Because now that she can crawl, whenever I give her the old "Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!", she STOPS to sit up and clap. So, there goes the fantasy of my getting something going on the sidelines of a field hockey game in 2026.

When Rudy really crawled, the length of a room, I wasn't even there. I was at the dentist, and Todd was literally sweating it out with Bean and Toot in the playroom. When I got home and discovered that Rudy finally pulled it together in the measly forty minutes I was away to have my teeth cleaned, I felt betrayal and a sort of Swiper-like "Oh, man!" for about two seconds. Then I felt really (truly!) happy for Todd, because this is probably the first unplanned First he's witnessed. And don't worry. His new cellie has video capability. And because we live in the new millennium, and he can actually shoot footage from his phone up to outer space so that it can bounce off a satellite and then beam down into my computer, here she goes. For real.

And there's that Lambie again. Today at Heather's, Rudy crawled to Lambie for everyone like a well-rehearsed show. And Owen was so happy to see her do it that he kept pulling Lambie just out of Toot's reach. But Rudy kept on. She did not quit. And she wasn't even doing it for Owen. Because in this lifetime, she doesn't have to prove nothin' to nobody. Except herself.*

*This kind of constant referencing is going to drive her cr-aaaa-zy.