Truman Unfolds

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.