HELP! My baby's crawling up the stairs!

 "Your baby probably will start trying to climb stairs soon after she learns to walk. This often happens about 12 months old, but she may take her first steps anytime between 10 and 18 months."

-babycenter.com

Dang you and your inaccurate information, babycenter.com. My baby girl turned 8 months old all of 7 days ago, and I caught her climbing the stairs all the way to mommy and daddy's room today. That's a full HALF of her life off, babycenter. So there.

Better average out your research with my family next time you post something like that as fact. All three of my kids took their first steps between 6 and 7 months old. And the first two were proficient walkers by 9 months.

Our baby started crawling about 3 weeks ago and only recently has figured out that this trick can do more than get her from Toy A to Toy B, sitting only feet apart from one another. Now she follows us around like a miniaturized, 3-dimensional shadow that likes to use our pant legs to stand up. Plus our shadow is cuter than us, and balder than my wife, at least. Now we find her in the kid's bedroom. We find her in the kitchen. We rarely find her where we left her like we might have - ohhhh - three weeks ago.

This makes for some world-class double takes. Today, she was shadowing me into the kitchen when the stairs caught her eye. She peeled off my ankles and started using the broad landing stair to stand up. I thought nothing of it because she often uses anything she can get her hands on to stand up. (By the way, she took her first steps two and a half weeks ago, while still 7 months old.) She seems liberated by the revelation of locomotion. She's happier than she's ever been.

Anyway, I went to check on something in the kitchen and then glanced back to where my shadow had lost me.

I had lost my shadow. It was not in view. The pieces of the puzzle came together in my head: "Baby's crawling up the stairs!" I told my wife urgently and zipped over to confirm my solid hunch. Sure enough, she had already ascended two stairs, happily cooing as she worked on the third. Her major problem was posed by her slippery footy jammies. On our wood stairs, she kept slipping as she tried to kneel on the stair below to attain the stair above.

"If I weren't so dang proud of you," I told my 8-month old, "I'd swat your bottom."

"Vvvvbbbblllllbbnnmm," she hummed at me, crinkling her eyes with glee. I'm glad I caught her when I did. Instead of being a 100% responsible father, I decided on 90% responsible and let her continue up the stairs with me as a spotter, hovering inches away in case of an emergency. On about step number 6, she relinquished her handhold on the steps and stood, unsupported, waving her arms in circular triumph. The longest I've seen her stand without holding anything is about 30 seconds, but with slippery footies on polished wood stairs, I don't trust her as far as she can fall down, ummm...the stairs, I guess. She righted herself and kept on going up the stairs, despite my concern.

The worst incident actually came when she stopped to rest. Since she had been hugging the wall, when she turned to flop on to her bum and take a breather, said bum encountered said wall and she flopped forward onto unsaid face. Unsaid face began to cry. From the kitchen, unsaid Mommy threatened unsaid Daddy's life, assuming he could have done something to prevent it.

In the end she all but summited the staircase. And if she'd been wearing the getup of the child in the picture above, she would have made it look a heck of a lot easier than climbing a 1,000 foot sand dune. Many parents would be chagrined to find such a young'un scaling a staircase. In fact, I know many parents who go out of their way to ensure their babies don't walk until they're two. It would be easier that way, I think. But I love to see such short little legs taking such long strides. The thrill just wouldn't be the same if she were doing this half her life later. Besides, she's just prepping herself for the great outdoorsy life we have planned for her.

Waking up with Pineapple Head

When I came home from work today, my son was sporting a mohawk. I thought it was just one of his more notable bedheads and I ruffled the crazy hair with my hand as I greeted him.

"You got a mohawk, buddy!" I said enthusiastically.

"No, it's pineapple head!" he said with equal and opposite enthusiasm. It took a minute for this to sink in. Wait...this was done on purpose? His mother assured me that he was, indeed, supposed to look like a pineapple.

Hmmm...

It made me wonder why he wanted to self identify with one of nature's funniest-looking fruits. I digress. But I had to agree: he looked a little like a pineapple with big blue eyes and blond fronds sprouting.  We had recently gotten a pineapple, and when he and his mother looked at how to tame his whacked-out hair in the mirror this morning, he made the connection himself and ran with it.

"I look like a pineapple!" he told his mom. "Can you make it in a big wave so I look more like a pineapple?"

And the mother of my children acquiesced to his nutty request, thus making him the fruitiest child in the family. Now I'm OK with dress-up-as-a-pineapple day, but let's just hope this doesn't become habitual. Something that's uber cute once can kind of look different when done 200 days straight. But I'm just glad I got to see the *ahem* fruit of his mom's labors today. It was a day-brightening experience to come home to pineapple head.

The Art of Parenthood #1: Redirecting Kids' Attention

art

1.

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

 

Working in an art gallery for many years, it surprised me to find this is the first definition for art on dictionary.com. I assumed it would be the third or fourth definition. But the "collective fine arts" is actually in that spot. That may show the relative importance. While art applied to a canvas or sculpture can be beautiful and can enliven a home, office or any other space, art applied to life can make every day more meaningful and worth living.

 

I discovered this principle last night. I recently read an article by Thomas S. Monson called "Living the Abundant Life." Actually I read it once and then have been reminded of it by other people three times until it has become cemented in my scattered brain. In it he lists the ABCs of an abundant life.

 

A=Attitude. Not the kind you cop when you're mouthing off.

B=Believe. Believe in yourself and the goodness in others.

C=Courage. Courage to do what is right despite the costs.

 

He said it much better than that summary, of course. But I'd like to focus on the principle of attitude. After having this pounded into my head, I realized my attitude has been lacking in regards to family of late. Every bedtime has been drudgery I couldn't wait to be finished with. My attitude had sunk like a certain cruise ship of late, though my ship had fewer survivors. So two nights ago I decided to make bedtime special again. It wasn't an easy thing to do, I literally had to shift my paradigm to see it as a privilege to tell "make-up" stories to my children. 

 

I went in with my renewed attitude, where my daughter gave me the wrong kind of attitude after a nonexistent offense on my part. I struggled to keep a positive attitude. After a brief timeout on her own bed, I allowed her to join the fun resulting from my story, which looked a lot like this Calvin and Hobbes, but with two kids:

 

 

I soon fell asleep on my son's bed having depleted my own energy reserves. Nestled in each arm I had a tiny, loving child, though one was still awake and squirmy as all get out. Had I gone in with my recent normal attitude, I would have grudgingly made up a story and skedaddled as fast as I could. But instead I spent a solid hour or two just loving my children. Then my wife woke me up, demanding she be the one cuddled in bed without saying a word. I left my kids a happy man. My son politely asked me to move his sleeping sister to her own bed now that I was no longer there to act as a buffer zone. I politely declined because of some injuries I sustained in the fall which still have me down and out.

The next night when I got home, I discovered, or rather honed, the skill and art of redirecting attention. My daughter has been a jagged little pill of late. She's three, and makes sure you know how big 3 year olds are. This leads to some hugely negative attitudes from her. Anyway, she has a habit of loving her 7-month-old sister like a dump truck loves trash, i.e. with persistent crushing force. This can be problematic, as you might imagine. After stepping up to the parental plate to bat her away from her vulnerable sister umpteen times, I finally decided I had to be more forceful or sneaky in getting her away from the baby. But because of my attitude change, I chose the latter. 

"If you go onto your brother's bed with me, I'll let you tackle me!" I said like it'd be better than chocolate chip cotton candy. She dropped all pretense of attacking her sister and ran into the bedroom, where she and I spent a half hour wrestling, her giggling and delighted the whole time. It was another sublime parental experience I would have missed had I continued to bat her away from her sister like a 1.000 hitter in a batting cage.

I guess the lesson is that the best way to take something away from a child is to give them something even better. And if that thing happens to be love and attention, both the parent and the child win.