Pull up post: DIY enhancing baby’s environment
August 4, 2010 — Alenka | Posted in Uncategorized. 2 Comments »
In response to some requests to provide more illustrations for the diy projects that we undertook to enhance our baby’s environment, I finally started posting pictures. See our Pull-up post and its description here: Illustration of the Pull Up Bar for the most adorable pulley in your house.
August 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm
The pull up bar looks great and I want to get my husband to make one! But I have one question: We’re using the How Smart Is Your Baby book, and she’s now crawling on her belly at 5 months. Probably we should wait till she does the all important hands and knees crawl before encouraging her to walk?
August 14, 2010 at 1:42 pm
We used this bar starting three weeks old. I looked at it as a good way to train both hands and feet: make them stronger, not as a walking aid. In his first weeks just standing for a few seconds, bearing weight on his legs and holding the bar was challenging enough. When he was older, he liked sitting in front of it, playing with toys that we were hanging, hanging on it a little (i.e. training his arms). Later he started pulling himself up, was very curious to reach for the toys on the sofa. Interestingly, when he started cruising, he wasn’t really using this bar: he was cruising against the walls, and the sofa. He used to bar only to pull himself up. It could be due to its height – it was at his waist line height, so sofa was a more convenient – it provided chest level support. We purposefully placed it on that height: we thought that pulling himself up from lying down or even sitting was more important at that point, then even walking. I guess a two-bar set up, like a really long ladder, could work even better… Another reason for preferring sofa as a walking aid, as a opposed to the bar, could be because both of my kids started walking really early and releasing their grasp was still quite an effort
). Once they grasped the bar, letting it go was difficult – they were kind of stuck to it, holding on really hard. On the wall or a sofa, they barely leaned for balance, they couldn’t grab anything, so it was easier to concentrate on leg movement. On the other hand, they couldn’t pull themselves up with the wall or a sofa for the same reason. So, having a bar was really helpful after-all on many stages of their development – we used it for a long while with both babies.