I can hardly believe the kid is ten and a 1/2 months old. He has grown so much I have to re-watch videos of him to remind myself this is the same baby I gave birth to in August of last year. He is a big kid, by anyone's standards, weighing in at 26 pounds, 30 inches long. And this is after he LOST weight.
Yes, crawling around and being Destruct-o Baby is great cardio, apparently...for both of us. I've actually taken to groveling at this point, begging him to please DO NOT KILL MY MAGAZINES and NO EATING OF PLANTS AND/OR ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT, PLEASE. Needless to say, it does not work at all. Difficult baby.
It seems like over a period of two weeks, he went from, "oooh timid timid...maybe I can reach that ball if I try to wriggle my way over there!" to "ZOOOOOOM VRRROOOOMMM!! EAT MY DUST, MA!"
He went from novice crawler to expert within a week, and now he's daredevil enough to pull himself up by his white-tipped fingertips. He attempts it on any surface, wall, door, and usually succeeds. And when he doesn't, like today, he crashes like a stunt dummy onto his head and starts wailing like he's being murdered.
Take today, for example. Wonderful husband put up the baby gate at the top of the stairs. Baby sees baby gate. Baby attempts to scale baby gate. Baby loses grip and falls on his head.
Oh, the bloody screaming begins. Poor little dude couldn't catch his breath, he was crying so intensely. I even got my first glimpse of the notorious "silent wail" that children sometimes do when they are so distraught they can't even manage a squeak for at least three seconds.
It was one of those moments that made me momentarily hate myself. How could I not know he was going to whack himself in the head? After all, I saw him struggling with the gate. I should have been watching carefully.
Shamed, I checked his head, which had a lovely little goose egg that was already turning purple. Great. Feeling like a horrible mother, I held him for several minutes and tried to soothe his broken pride. He eventually calmed down enough to pile his head onto my shoulder and just sniffle.
The moment of shame turned into the moment I felt like a real mom, perhaps for the first time. Not that I don't feel like a mother all the time...exhaustion and sleep deprivation prove that I'm definitely the mother of this little tornado.
But when I felt his hand on my neck, his hot forehead nuzzling into my ear, I felt like I had crossed a boundary into REAL MOTHERHOOD.
In other words, I fixed my first boo-boo.
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