Finley rolled from her back to her tummy to her back. Then did it again. And again. If she could, she would roll out the door, down the stairs and up the street. As cute as it is (you can see for yourself in the Fin Clips) it just means we’ve crossed the big parenting threshold of keeping all eyes on baby.
Even though she’s pretty limited in her range and direction, it doesn’t mean she won’t figure out someway to get into something. Which means this weekend we’ll be shopping for baby proofing tools. Covers, guards, straps and whatever else they make to keep kids out, off, in or from. But it’s not just doors or latches. It’s checking the carpet for anything we’ve dropped, moving things from lower shelves, covering outlets and keeping cables out of baby’s reach. And that’s just the start.
Her rolling will eventually turn into crawling and crawling leads to pulling herself up on anything she can find. So shelves need to be secured into walls while coffee tables and couches need to be kept clear because she will attempt to grab anything grabable and put it in her mouth.
It’s not that we won’t be watching her, it’s just that one turn of our back to answer a phone or grab some laundry and she’ll be off. Even now, we have to make sure everything is within reach when we’re changing her or she’ll do her best to roll off the changing table.
We know we won’t be able to catch everything, but short of duct-taping her to a wall, I’m sure Heather will find everything we need to keep baby safe. I’ll be the one trying to figure out how it all works… And scraping the duct tape off the wall.
Which makes me wonder how I ever survived my childhood. We didn’t wear helmets when we rode our bikes. We bounced around without seat belts in the backs of the cars. Most of my toys were made of metal and had sharp edges. If you didn’t have a tooth knocked out or some sort of scrape on your knees or facial area, you weren’t a kid in my neighborhood.
But that’s all changed. I guess the kids my age and older were all the test subjects so OUR kids could have the soft, cushy toys. We got the concussions and broken arms so the big companies could charge big bucks for helmets and pads. Do kids even wear casts anymore? I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid with a cast. In fact, the last time I saw one, it was bright orange. A real cast was flaky white and covered with more signatures than a yearbook. Now you can probably get a cast to match what you’re wearing that day. Where was I? Oh yah, Finley is rolling and now she’s even rockin’!
Another big event of the week was a family outing to Finley’s first concert. Well, it was a concert for Mom and Dad, but since it was at the Woodland Park Zoo, we brought the munchkin along. The band, Pink Martini, played cocktail lounge tunes, while our little family spread out on the zoo lawn and had a picnic. It was a great evening. And Finley loved every minute of it. She was quite amazed at the amount of folks and is becoming quite the people watcher. She even had a “dance” in her dad’s arms at the end of the show.
I hope this is just the beginning of her awareness of music. She’s got the toys with the 90 different versions of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” and I played plenty of Beatles for her while she was in the womb. But getting out and experiencing real music, especially live music is a new deal for her.
I’m hoping she not only continues to discover music, but finds the real joy in it. And I can’t wait for the time when she’s moved past rolling and crawling and can get up on her little feet and dance with her dad again.
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