Adventures in Parenting #40: Stand and Deliver

Once upon a time I operated a movie review website where I published something at least once every week day. I think about that now and laugh/cry at the very idea of having the time to write, proofread, stylize, and publish five times a week. It's like I didn't have a tiny being who was completely dependent upon me for literally everything occupying so much of my time and could fill those need-less hours with watching movies and talking about them! Oh wait, that's exactly what it was like. Sometimes these days I feel like I barely have time to think thoughts let alone put them into word form for others to read. If I could somehow instantly deliver my inner monologue into a blog post then--- no, you know what, that wouldn't work because sometimes it would basically look like the dialogue of the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons except with way more crying. So scratch that idea. All of that is my way of saying, "Hey sorry I haven't written anything in two weeks and haven't talked about my kid in almost a month." Trust me when I say that a lack of commentary on Adventures in Parenting does not in any way mean there have not been any Adventures in Parenting. Rather, I would say, so many Adventures in Parenting that my writing time has been devoted instead to watching reruns of 24 in peace and silence (like every other good red blooded American) and trying to recharge my battery for the next day. Kids are tiring, y'all. And I only have one. Some people have two! Can you believe that?! They actually volunteer to have two of these little leeches! So weird. But anyway, a good deal has happened in the last month and unfortunately I just haven't had the time to document this. "What exactly has happened?" you ask and I'm so glad you did.

First of all, Cooper started crawling. Like really moving. He still doesn't seem all that interested in crawling around on his knees like a normal child but he has the army crawl bit down. He could probably train army cadets on the proper technique and if he doesn't find a job soon, I'm probably going to volunteer his services. He is stinking FAST on the army crawl. Second, he got really into starting peek-a-boo on his own (crawling to the corner of the couch and hiding his face and then popping out excitedly) for about two weeks and it was the cutest thing ever in the history of the world. Unfortunately, I could never get a good recording of it and now he's too cool for peek-a-boo (I blame his no-good, hipster baby friends) so I may never be able to show this off. Third, around the same time that he started bailing on peek-a-boo, he discovered the ability to stand.

We've been standing him up in our laps or on the couch for several weeks in an effort to plant the seed of standing in his little mind and he took to it. It doesn't hurt that anytime he would stay standing for a few second we literally applauded him and cheered him like he just won a spelling bee. He loves to be applauded. Sometimes if he hears cheering and applause on TV, he thinks it's for him and graciously accepts the admiration of his subjects. The King Baby, through and through. But a few weeks ago he army crawled his way over to the windowsill, pulled himself up, and twerked. Okay, maybe he wasn't TRYING to twerk (at least I hope he wasn't) but he stuck his little King Booty out and shook it like a Polaroid picture (*HEY YA!*) partly because he was very pleased with himself and partly because I'm pretty sure his legs were about to give out.

Since this milestone moment, standing has become literally the only thing Cooper wants to do. When he has access to snack puffs, he wants to eat them standing up. When he wants to play, he takes a toy to the coffee table so he can play with it standing up. (And by toy, I mean the remote control, our phones, or worst of all, my iPad. Someday soon we are actually going to have a fist fight over my iPad.) If he needs to poop...well, you get the idea. If he has the strength to stand, he finds something on which to pull himself up and he stands until he is exhausted and then he stands and cries until someone picks him up. If he had a Facebook profile, his interests would just be "Standing."

The only real problem with his standing is that his desire to stand and walk has taken precedence over all other tasks. Who needs to learn to actually crawl, like a normal baby, when there's all this standing to be done? And he's already begun to get super frustrated that his standing doesn't easily transition into walking which he so BADLY wants to do. You guys haven't lived until you've laughed at a standing baby as he throws a temper tantrum because his legs won't keep up with his mind. Or maybe you have lived and I'm super lame. Either way.

Lucy the Beagle does not care for Standing Baby, Brian