Crawling and My Mixed Emotions

About a week ago, my life changed; again. Carson started crawling and I started chasing. Chasing and yelling “no, baby, no!” as he pulled on cords, chewed on cords, ate dog food, splashed water out of the dog food bowl, ate anything that happened to be dropped on the carpet and moved dangerously close to the top of the stairs. The cords are the biggest problem as we are a pretty high tech household, there’s phone chargers, laptop chargers, baby monitor chargers, cable cords, router cords, you name it, and it can be pulled over or chewed on. The chewing part really freaks me out, especially when he manages to find the extension cord piece with all the things plugged into it. Great now there are three things that could electrocute him all coming together in one place. So as he gets faster, so do I. My habits are changing and I clean up after myself a lot faster. If I’m done using the computer, away it goes, cord and all. If the dog has been fed, her bowls are on the counter and she gets to drink out of the toilet. Sorry Lily, that’s the way its gotta be.

He also goes straight for the dog. He likes to pull her tail, her cheeks or just grab a handful of fur and so far Lily has been pretty patient with this. I think she knows that Carson is her secondary food source as she gets to clean up after his mealtime. However, she has lost her patience with him twice and that’s just enough for me to want to keep them apart. Two little barks, but still, I don’t really want them turning into bites. So now, I chase after that problem too.

I haven’t managed to get to the store to buy a baby gate yet, but in light of the developing dog problem, I think its coming in the next few days. Carson gets faster every day. I keep saying our house is so small, it seems silly to put him in a fenced in area, but I tell you, I think it will save me some sanity, because between the dog and the baby, I think my patience just can’t take it anymore.

So that is the truth about crawling. It’s adorable, its fun to watch him learn and grow and he sleeps a lot longer during his naps. It must take more energy to crawl rather than just lay there and flail around, which is what he was doing, so for every moment I spend chasing, I get a few more moments of nap time to myself.

Along with this new motor skill, a few more have developed that make the crawling more tolerable. The cuteness factor of these skills seems to equalize the difficulty of the crawling. Carson can copy me. He makes noises and then looks at me to see if I can make the same noise and when I do, he does it again, and again and again. This game can last as long as I think its fun to do. He can also waive in response to me, which is really just putting his arm up and shaking it about, but other people think it’s a waive and therefore it's cute. During dinner he likes to put his hands in the air and wavie ‘em like he just don’t care. Then he waits for you to do it. Its really pretty funny. So the moral of my story is this, for everything that gets harder, there is something else that get more enjoyable. So I try to take it in stride and press my internal reset button so I can adapt once again.