If you were to ask Truman what was best in life, and he were
able to articulate a response, he might answer thusly:
“To destroy your laundry, to see it thrown on the floor, and
to hear the lamentations of your parents.”
And it’s not just laundry he’s after.
Truman is fast approaching the toddle stage. He’s not
walking on his own, but he’s taking steps (I know, I know) toward that
accomplishment. He can now pull himself up to standing on anything that he can
get a good grip on. The couch, the storage container disguised as an ottoman,
the Poang—a piece of discounted Ikea furniture only purchased as you’re headed
toward the checkout. “$50 for a chair? Why the hell not?” Truman targets all as
readily climbable pieces of furniture.
At first we were struck with awe. Before, we could safely
plop the man down on the carpet in the living room with a few noise-making toys
and not worry about him traveling too far. He wasn’t crawling. He wasn’t
climbing. He could stand if we pulled him up. But that was it.
Then one day, without us even noticing, he’s standing next
to the couch. You turn your back on him for just one second and he’s already
standing, trying to remove fur from the cat. (Excuse me while I go listen to
some Harry Chapin.) Okay, I’m back. Man, my allergies are bad this year.
We rewarded this feat with lots of clapping and exclamations
of “Good job!” He started doing it more. He’d grimace and grunt, pulling more
with his hands than pushing with his feet, and once fully erect, he’d look at
us with a small smile, then plunk back onto his bum with a thud. Of course we
responded to this with “Good falling!” And he’d try again. We didn’t know then
what we were in for.
We soon realized that the reward for his climbing wasn’t in
the act itself, as one climbs Everest. He was climbing things to get to stuff,
as one would climb Olympus in order to enter the realm of the gods and rain
fiery bolts of chaos on the land below.
Now he climbs everything he can just to find out if there’s
something on top to throw on the floor. Books or magazines on the ottoman? They
belong on the floor. Toys in the toy box. On the floor. (He prefers to stand
next to the box even though he could just as easily sit next to it and grab the
toys inside.) He uses the “Baby Einstein” as a central hub to all the climbable
things in the living room. There’s nothing on it to throw on the ground, but
he’ll pull himself up next to it and cruise around the edge to get to the couch
or Poang.
This is all way more scary than it is fun. Truman likes to
scooch over to my rolling office chair and push it back and forth. He tries to
pull himself to standing, but the chair rolls away from him and he flops down.
Then he scooches over my computer, or a cord, or an outlet. I take my eye off
of him for a moment and the lamp is all the sudden rocking back and forth.
Today I found him scooching over to Annabelle’s food bowl. (I use the word
scooch because he’s not really crawling in the strictest sense of the term. He
leans on the outside of his left ankle and pushes with his right, as if he were
kneeling on a skateboard.)
He’s also shown an interest in disassembling our furniture.
One day I found a bolt on the seat of the Poang. Truman had somehow unscrewed
it from the leg of the chair and placed it there. I later caught him absent-mindedly running his thumb over the head of the bolt once I had screwed back
in.
So we are excited about Truman toddling and walking, but we
were hoping for a little more time to baby proof. We’ll be moving in a few
weeks, so all we have to do is make it until then. We can baby proof the new
place as we move in. And even better, there will be a room for Truman to have
for himself.
Now we just need to teach Truman to sleep in his own crib, in his
own room, and make sure he doesn’t wander off in the meantime.
