My Rowdy Bear

I haven't had nearly as much time to blog lately! It's not just that Bear and I have been busy, it's also that Bear is so active recently that I just don't have the time. I have to wait until he's sleeping or until he's ready to be plopped into his exersaucer or jumperoo, which is getting less and less often. He wants to be on the go constantly and gets frustrated if I try to keep him in one place. He LOVES to stand up and try to walk, but honestly, he isn't very good at it yet. Just now I had to stop typing and help him up off the floor. He was attempting to cruise along the couch, but he tripped over his own feet and went down. He fell onto his new train that his Grandma J. just sent to him and the smokestack got stuck in the leg of his diaper! It just kept making animal sounds as he rolled to get up. I laughed, which probably made him even more frustrated, but hey, it was funny!

There are things that he's getting into and places he's crawling that I just haven't anticipated. I fully expected him to get into the dog food, open cabinets and drawers and get anything off low shelves we have, but he surprises me nearly every day. I think it's going to be a while before we are fully childproofed, simply because I have to learn (through trial and error, mostly) what needs to be moved or protected. Yesterday, we went to the park with the moms club that I belong to. I was sitting on a blanket with him for the majority of the time, but he kept eating the woodchips that line the playground, so I picked him up and sat him on a piece of playground equipment that was about as tall as my waist. He sat there for the longest time, watching older kids and exploring the little holes in the base of the climbing equipment, when all of the sudden, he took off crawling along the steps up to a slide. I freaked out and jumped up on the steps to grab him. I must have looked panicked, because all the moms asked me what happened. It probably wasn't a big deal, but there aren't rails or anything on the edges of the steps to keep him from toppling off, so I was more than a bit nervous.

Something else that he got into the other day that I wasn't expecting--our wine rack! When he first started crawling, we emptied low shelves, but didn't really do so in the dining room. We hardly ever use that room and I didn't even remember that we had a wine rack in there. I was emptying the dishwasher and Bear was crawling around the kitchen floor behind me. I saw him crawl into the dining room, but I didn't think too much of it, because he had done that so many times before. He usually just crawled through and went into the living room. I can see the living room from the kitchen, but I cannot see the dining room from there. I kept expecting him to show up in the living room, but when he did not and it was very quiet in the dining room, I decided to go check. Bear was very close to getting a bottle of merlot off the wine rack! I envisioned red wine, broken glass and a hurt baby all at once and I yelled "NOOOOOOO!!", which of course scared him and made him cry. I got it away from him in time, but I'm sure that there are other things I'm not thinking of that he'll break before I get there or before I can anticipate that he might get into it. Like I said earlier, I guess it'll just have to be trial and error. I try to be one step ahead and think about things from his point of view, so low on the floor, but I can't fathom everything! He's a creative little boy and I'm sure he'll continue to surprise and amaze me, which, in a way, I love. I don't want him to get hurt, obviously, and I don't want him to break our things, but his personality is really starting to show and we think he's going to be a mischievous little guy!