The Number Field

I was playing with Elena and Roman on the living room floor. It would probably be more accurate to say that I was roughhousing with Elena while Roman rolled around on a blanket nearby. Elena likes to wrestle--which means that she pushes me down, then I tickle her for a while before we reset and do it again. I try to encourage her creativity and problem solving skills by not always going down on the first push, so she has to try different approaches.

During one short break in the action, I noticed that Roman was a lot closer than he had been before. He had been working on rolling and squirming to move himself closer to things that he wanted. This time it was different: he had moved farther, faster, and more directly than would be possible by rolling. I halted Elena's next advance so we could observe Roman. He soon showed us an army crawl, pushing up with his right hand and muscling forward with his left forearm. A video is worth more than the hundred and eighty four words I've written so far: