This is a post for anyone who has ever been vaguely annoyed by my enthusiasm about my genius baby. During an ordinary week, I would have needed a <beaming proudly> HTML tag for this post, but not today.
Pete is crawling across the room now – not just crawling, but cross-crawling. He has speed. He has endurance. He has one tired mama.
It is crunch time for me with a large-ish volunteer commitment, and I am sneaking to the computer whenever I can. While I am sneaking to the computer, Pete is sneaking to the library basket. Oh, does he love books. Eating them, that is.
His first solid food was newspaper, and he has continued to indulge his graphophagy habit whenever he gets the chance. Last night Elwood was flipping through the new New Yorker, pulling out all the blow-in cards. (This is one of my husband's quirks: he cannot abide blow-in cards and pulls them out of any magazines he comes across, wherever they may be. My parents never, but never, take things out of their magazines, and so Elwood's habit of purging blow-in cards from all the dentist's reading material struck me at first as rather bold, like ripping the DO NOT REMOVE tag from a mattress. In the store, no less. (I told you my parents were rules people.))
One rejected blow-in card fell to the floor and Pete sprinted to it. Like a cheetah. Okay, actually like a tortoise. But a really cute tortoise. He wanted that card in his mouth and was quite indignant when I tried to trade a toy for it. Toys are not nearly as interesting and tasty as paper.
It's always a mental adjustment when they learn to crawl. You put them down and turn around to pour yourself a glass of water and suddenly – Whoa! How did you get there?
A few days ago I was testing our kitchen window for lead. I set Pete down by the tupperware basket and turned my back briefly. Suddenly I heard a thump and a surprised cry – he had crawled over to the steps and rolled down one. I wanted to say, “What are you doing? Can't you see I'm busy protecting you from hazards here?”
We have not childproofed at all, though we did think about it while we were unpacking. The accessible cabinets are full of baby-friendly things, like pots and pans and – plastic bags. Make that mostly full of baby-friendly things.
We need to get down to business with outlet covers and gates and cabinet locks, but this is a bad week for it. I am distracted and unshowered and not what you'd call full of wonder at this latest development. In fact I must admit to the slightest susurration of discontent. “Couldn't you have picked next week to be precocious?” I want to ask him.
But it is impossible to stay grumpy in the face of such deliciousness. On the floor in that picture is our laminated map of the world, an idea I highly recommend to homeschooling families. For a long time we kept a world map on the wall, but it's really helpful to get down on the floor and look at things up close, or draw paths from Samarkand to Juneau with a dry-erase marker. Pete likes it too. He says, “See this? My oyster, baby.”
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