Tag Archives: babies

There’s a storm brewing: the baby is mobile

I wrote recently about the baby’s achievements in learning the art of crawling. Since then, he has improved by leaps and bounds, such as those jumping acts apply to one who cannot yet stand upright.

The little fellow has become increasingly mobile in his desire to see the world, as defined by the first floor of our house. Now, having helped the child attain such a glorious milestone, it is time for all good parents to experience remorse.

It is time to regret all of the crawling demonstrations given to the wide-eyed infant. It is time to wish away all the helping hands provided in keeping his little knees underneath him as he wobbled back and forth. It is time to think better of all the encouragement and clapping of hands that accompanied the gaining of that first inch of ground.

It is time to feel the horror building from the pit of the stomach as the realization sets in: we’ve given this monster the superpower of mobility.

baby playing with cat

Even the cat asks us, “What the hell were you thinking?” with his shocked and alarmed eyes.

There must be some side-effect of parenthood that makes people stupid and forgetful. We are too stupid to realize that a stationary baby is far less a danger to our persons and our property than is a mobile baby. And we can’t even remember this moment of terrible revelation from the last time we went through it.

We should have been tipping him over every time he climbed up upon his hands and knees. We should have been furiously barricading his path with bookcases and upended dining tables. We should have clapped and cheered every time his arms gave out under the weight of his body.

But we did not do these eminently practical things. We did everything he needed us to do in order for him to achieve his nefarious ends. We did it all, because we would rather live in a house, destroyed or barren up to the waist, than suffer our child to be one moment behindhand in his development.

Well, the joke’s on us because we don’t have a cautious child at all. Instead, we have a charismatic manipulator, who beguiled us into the role of henchmen with his three-and-a-half-toothed smile. Only as we begin to pay the price for our callow enthusiasm does the spell begin to fade.

cat watching baby crawl

The reality of the situation having set in, the cat makes plans to abandon this area to the raging whirlwind. Note the overturned bus in the background. Add those unfortunate commuters to the storm’s toll.

It’s too late. Things are getting misplaced, broken, and maybe even slobbered upon. Every day the house becomes more and more top heavy with precious items too dear to be sacrificed as low hanging fruit.

And of all the foolish parents in the world, we are perhaps the biggest fools, for we have helped this baby hone his crawling skills just in time to make a playground of havoc out of a Christmas tree.

Don’t start a crawl you can’t finish

The baby has been working on his crawling for the past few weeks and has finally honed the single skill that will give him the confidence to become a proficient crawler. I call this skill the exit strategy.

For the first couple weeks of crawling practice, the baby did the natural thing by rolling himself onto his tummy and pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. This was all well and good while it lasted, but he was doomed to lose this posture before long and find himself flat on his belly, hopelessly trying to doggie paddle across the carpet.

He found this to be an awkward and vulnerable position. All he could do was cry and hope that some helpful walker would take pity and set him back up into a sitting position. From there, he could play quietly and forget all about his crawling woes until some inviting object, just outside of his reach, tempted him into another fiasco of failed locomotion.

Crawling had descended into quagmire for him. He could get into proper position, but then not really go anywhere, except maybe a few inches in reverse, before his limbs gave out and left him beached on the unforgiving shores of immobility.

crawling practice

He’s in the starting blocks, but is he in forward or reverse gear?

This flawed routine was beginning to gnaw at his confidence. It certainly made him cry a lot, and perhaps develop a habit of searching the space above him for circling birds of prey. It also made him less threatening to the cat, who no longer seemed to worry about letting down his guard around such an unpredictable creature.

That was when ingenuity took precedence over instinct. The baby stopped working so hard on trying to move, having assumed the proper crawling position, and started working on putting himself back into a stable, upright sitting posture. If you don’t agree that this breakthrough has undoubtedly saved the human race from extinction, imagine the world’s ancient population of cave people lying flat on their bellies in predator-filled forests, crying out, “Unga munga wunga!” (Loosely translated: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”)

Once the baby knew that he could rescue himself from crawling mishaps and put himself back where he could swat at any potential swooping birds and keep the cat in his proper place, crawling was not the high-risk ordeal it had once been. It was amazing how much more eager he was to practice crawling once he knew that he controlled how practice would end.

baby and toys

Ambition –noun– def: strong desire for achievement, as when a baby desperately crawls toward a walker.

The boy is not a proficient crawler yet, but it’s all downhill from here. He’s conquered the one thing that could stand in his way; he’s conquered his fear, and he did it with a remarkably well-ordered plan.

Our budding little human developed his first exit strategy, which is good news for him, but bad news for the cat, because now the cat will have to develop quick exit strategies from anyplace that is floor level.

 

Conversations with my wife: Interpreting motherhood

Our baby saves his crying almost exclusively for when he is tired. But when he does cry, he really belts it out. He’ll play and play, then suddenly start to wail. This means it’s time to help him drift off to sleep.

One night, when my wife was out, the baby turned on his tired siren. My wife came home as I was rocking him in my arms. He hadn’t gone to sleep yet, which means he was still bellowing his sleepy woes at me.

WIFE: What’s wrong with the baby?

ME: He’s ready for bed.

WIFE: Poor thing. Give him to his mother.

(I hand him over, which is always easier to do when he’s crying.)

WIFE: (To the baby.)My sweet baby, always crying for your family when you get so sleepy. You’re just like your mama.

ME: That’s not like you at all. You yell at your family when you’re tired.

WIFE: That’s how mothers cry.

wife scolding husband

American men have been misinterpreting motherhood since the days of the Founding Fathers (and Founding Sons). The poor, misunderstood mother in this scene is only crying at her family. Maybe it is her horribly dislocated elbow that is causing her such sadness.

Are there any Godzillas in the audience tonight?

Our four-year-old has to be the hardest working preschooler in the baby-entertaining business. He is forever putting on shows designed to make his baby brother giggle. It is demanding work, as his baby brother has a definite preference for physical comedy.

Big Brother throws himself around the room in a fit of slapstick, always seeking to add fresh elements to his act. The moves that get the best laughs from the baby are repeated until the poor boy is out of breath and must resort to making faces until he claims his second wind.

After wearing himself out entertaining his little brother, the big boy throws open his arms and shouts, “Thank you, thank you, thank you very much! Show’s over, good night!”

boy and baby playing on floor

When your fans get too excited about your performance, some of them may try to rush the stage. This is called audience participation.

But the show hasn’t ever been over, and I hope it never is. There’s nothing that compares to watching a boy work so hard to make his baby brother smile, unless it is watching the baby’s eyes glow with delight at the antics of his big brother. These are riches you can’t earn.

Having been both a little brother and a big brother, I understand that this era of good feelings won’t continue untroubled through the years. Increasing mobility leads little brothers into places within the carefully constructed worlds of big brothers where they become more annoying than cute.

The baby is already starting to form a black cloud around the horizon of his big brother’s world. He has developed a love for tearing up railroad tracks unseen since Sherman marched through Georgia. Whenever he can get himself near his brother’s train sets on the floor, he becomes a hatchling Godzilla, uttering baby dinosaur noises and throwing pieces of track over his shoulder with reptilian abandon.

baby tearing up railroad tracks

Oh, the humanity! Can civilization withstand the onslaught of marauding babies? Where is that other sock?

Naturally, Big Brother does not appreciate the damage that Baby Godzilla is doing to his ecosphere. He appeals to the Japan Self-Defense Force (a.k.a. Mom and Dad) for assistance. What Big Brother doesn’t understand, because he is neither a veteran of the JSDF nor a parent, is that the authorities have settled upon a program of appeasement when it comes to rampaging Godzillas. Consequently, he often gets responses like, “Let the baby play for a while. We’ll rebuild it.”

It’s frustrating watching your infrastructure being destroyed. So far, our big boy’s frustrations haven’t turned to resentment, but he doesn’t know what’s coming. He doesn’t know that he will begin to build more sophisticated, hence more vulnerable, worlds. He doesn’t know that his brother will soon be able to walk easily between them, tugging at linchpins and kicking cornerstones.

He will learn these things in time. They will be hard lessons. I hope that he will also learn that his little brother imposes himself into his world because his world is fun and interesting, and most of all because his little brother admires him and all that he can do. It is an admiration that he did so much to foster, back in the days when he did pratfalls to make his little brother smile.

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much! May this show go on for a very long time.