Upwardly Mobile

We saw it coming. We knew the day would get here, and now we’re doomed. Okay not really doomed, but life has definitely taken a big turn in the past week. And it kind of snuck up on us.

To begin with, Finley finally cut her first tooth. She’s got a little sharp one on the bottom gum, just to the left of center. This explains a little of the grumpiness she’s had and a few middle-of-the-night freak outs.

Secondly, our little angel has become quite the mobile machine. She doesn’t crawl in the normal sense… it’s more of an army crawl… but she can get around. Her balance has improved greatly, and she can now sit up on her own.

And within the past few days, she’s discovered a new ability that puts us dangerously close to walking… she can pull herself up to a standing position. All of these things happened within the last week and it’s not just a little overwhelming to us… it’s exciting to her.

You see, these new abilities are quite intriguing to the little miss. So much so, that she doesn’t want to go to sleep. No, not at all. In her little mind, there’s just too much to do and see, now that she can go places. A knob on a drawer or the heating vent are perfect things to go check out. That excitement, combined with the development of separation anxiety, makes nap time a much bigger chore than it used to be.

In fact, Sunday night she decided she’d had enough sleep for one evening and wanted to get up and play. Unfortunately, this was 3am. I was lucky enough to go check on her when she made the first sounds in the middle of the night. Usually, a few cries means she’s lost her pacifier and we take turns sleepwalking into her room, popping the binky back in, and sleepwalking back to bed. This night… morning… I came into her bedroom to find her wide awake, looking at me like it was time to play.

It got even better, later that morning when Heather went to go check on her after the wake up alarm went off. Instead of finding Finley awake and playing with a toy in bed, Heather came around the corner to see the Princess standing up in the crib, holding on to the side… She had pulled herself up. The problem was, she wasn’t quite sure how to get down. One can only imagine how long she’d been there.

Again, we knew this was coming. I personally didn’t think it would be this quickly! I figured I had a couple of more months of plopping her down amongst her favorite toys while she rolled around a gummed a doll or two. Now it’s all about keeping one eye on the baby all the time.

Of course this surveillance of the munchkin also leads to munchkin unhappiness. All of this mobility is freedom to her. And we’re the fascist government who won’t allow her to explore.

When she gets too close to the heater… it’s “No, no baby” followed by picking her up and dropping her into a sea of toys a safe distance away. Needless to say, she’s not a happy kid at that point.

And then there’s the bonking of the head. I mentioned before that her balance has improved… and it has. It’s just not complete. She tends to underestimate gravity and winds up head butting the floor or the occasional harder-than-usual toy. At this point, I think it scares her more than it hurts, but it’s all new to her.

That’s when I scoop her up, hold her for a bit and explain how there will be an untold number of falls and bonks in her future and that none of it hurts as much as getting your heartbroken and that I can’t be there to hold her all the time.

Of course, she just looks at me in between sobs as if to say, “I don’t care, Dad. Can’t you see I’m crying?” And I just hold her closer, make some funny noises and she’s ready to go challenge gravity once again. It’s a good thing that at her size, she doesn’t have far to fall.

Another good thing about being that little, is the whole short-term memory thing. I guess that’s why doctors poke and prod you right away… because they know you won’t remember the twenty shots to the legs and butt and come hunt them down in your adult life.

So, here we are, on the verge of having an upwardly mobile daughter in a very small condo. Where the rate of falls and scrapes begin to rise as the amount of naps dwindle. My only hope is that she does so much exploring during the day that she becomes exhausted at night and sleeps and sleeps. Then again, it’s much easier to pick her up after bonking her head on the floor that it is to imagine handing her the car keys. But that’s another day we’re doomed to see. And it can take it’s time getting here.