3V0154.01 Movement: body awareness and relocating an object (6/25/78)

For the first time I saw Peggy rise onto her hands and knees. (Gretchen remarks she saw her do so yesterday). A second kind of mobility Peggy has gained is rotational, e.g. she flails with all four limbs and makes a little progress at turning. She not only turns in her crib now, but even puts this turning to good use. Thus, when in the past she misplaced some toy beyond her visual field, she now can move herself to re-locate it. The example sparking the observation is this: Many times the past few weeks I have seen Peggy with a teething ring grasped in her hand end in this position — lying on her stomach with her arm, hand and teething ring at her side. She most frequently dropped the teething ring and cried, bringing the hand that held it to her mouth and not locating the ring again. Today, she was able to find the teething ring after dropping it. Peggy, after bringing the hand to her mouth, raised herself up on both hands, turned a little, looked back and saw the teething ring, then reached for it. (I don;t recall that she actually picked it up.) This accidental (?) relocation is an important incident as an example of how body geometry begins to extend from the visual field.

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