Eli: Just do it

Observing Eli's Cheerio adventures and experimenting with mobility makes me guess at how his learning style and personality are different than Tobey's. Tobey was much more of a studier. He'd observe, study, pick at toys, much like the quintessential male Chang. When he finally crawled, he had perfect form. When he finally walked, he was stable from the beginning. He would practice until perfect.

Eli seems to be a different creature. His method for picking up Cheerios is not as careful, but more of a "try it and see what happens" philosophy. He grabs as many as he can and shoves his fist towards his mouth and sees how many he gets. Although it's too early to predict how his crawling will turn out, his attempts seem to be do whatever he can to get some kind of forward motion. I remember when Jocelyn and Tobey would crawl next to each other. Anna commented on Tobey's good form while Jocelyn had more of a "free form" ;-) to get where she wanted to go. Eli's attempts have reminded me more of Jocelyn's style than Tobey's.

And while it's easy for me to think that Tobey's method is more "mature", I have to catch myself into thinking that Eli is somehow "messier" in his learning than Tobey. Where Tobey studies, Eli experiments. They can both be innovative in their own ways. I've always said that Matthew was booksmart where Andrew was streetsmart (who knows what I was left with). While not wanting to pigeonhold too early, maybe that kind of difference is emerging in Tobey and Eli.