On the move

The thing that has surprised me most about having a baby is how fast he changes. I was prepared for the "days are long, years are short" phenomenon, but not for the blink-and-miss-it pace that he learns things. In the past few days, Nico has shown an increased interest in playing on the floor. He's always been a wiggly baby, migrating around his crib during the night, but lately there seems to be more intent behind his wriggling. Just last night I was all besotted over him scooching forward about six inches on his blanket to grab a toy. And then this morning, I laid him down on his playmat with his stacking rings beside it and went to brush my teeth. When I came back, he was looking a bit guilty with a trail of destruction in his wake:

(When I left, the set of stacking rings was assembled
and standing where the red ring is in this photo.)

Then, when I picked him up from my parents' house after work, Mom said, "You know what he does with those stacking rings? He throws them across the room and then crawls after them."

I decided to test this somewhat outlandish claim for myself. After all, this baby was a sedate little swaddled bundle about five minutes ago. And guys? I think we're in deep shit:




After documenting his new skill for the internets posterity, I read him a few bedtime stories and took him into our room to nurse. He only ate for about five minutes, and then decided he needed to log a bit more crawling practice. I couldn't put him in his crib because I knew he'd scoot down to the end and bonk his head against the bars, so I kept him on my lap, my hand hooked securely at his hip to keep him from motoring off. What followed was like a weird cycle of baby Sun Salutations. He'd bury his face in my lap, poke his butt up into the air, push off with his toes, and raise his head back up. He did this for ten solid minutes -- head down, butt up, push off, head up. Head down, butt up, push off, head up.

I'm kind of excited, but also know that this is pretty much the end of life as we know it. No more skipping a day of sweeping up the dog hair, no more leaving shoes lying around in tempting locales, and no more plunking him down on a blanket long enough to make a sandwich and expecting him to be there when I get back.