When Elijah Pineiro-Zucker started crawling at 8 months, his mom, Diane, was taken aback. Scuttling around with one knee bent and the other extended, he "looked more like a crab than a human," says Pineiro-Zucker, of Poughkeepsie, NY. Like Elijah's, many infants' first attempts at moving from point A to point B don't resemble the classic image of crawling  -- baby on hands and knees, with initially wobbly arms and legs working in a synchronized fashion. "There are actually many different styles, all of which are completely normal," says Nancy Dodge, M.D., a developmental pediatrician at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, in Dallas.

Most infants make their first move sometime between 6 and 11 months  -- the average age is 9 months. But whether your baby crawls like a crustacean, scoots on his behind, or goes straight from sitting to standing, the cognitive and motor developments taking place are as exciting to him as they are to you. Here's what you can expect:

ALISON BELL, mother of three, writes for the Los Angeles Times.

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