Alex surprised us in Taiwan by holding onto my legs, looking up into my face, and saying "UP!" Was it chance, or did they teach him that one word in Engligh? I immediately rewarded him by picking him up and carrying him around. That is still the only English word he knows, but he knows how to use it. If I cannot immediately respond to his pleas to be picked up, he begins screaming protests and quickly works himself into a frenzy from which he does not calm down easily (He can go from happy boy to this stage in less than a minute). To avoid that problem, I try to honor his requests for "Up," and I figure he may spend up to 6 hours a day there on my hip. I tried a Snuggli--no good. I tried the backpack version of the Snuggli--better, but the success is short-lived. He has a favorite position on my hip, and there he wants to be.
When he's not on my hip, he runs through the house exploring. We saw him take 16 steps at a time while in Taiwan, and now, less than a month later, he is an absolute cruiser. His ability to get where he wants to be quickly creates a few interesting situations, especially since we have a four-year-old who has no concept of child-proofing:
Like the time I left him sitting looking at a book in the bedroom to put something away in the kitchen. When I returned, I found him in the bathroom that had just been vacated by my 4-year-old, happily playing in the toilet water. Fortunately, Amy had remembered to flush.
Or the time I carried him downstairs to start a load of laundry. He wandered off to the family room where Amy was watching TV. I quickly finished getting the load in, then went to find him. "Where's Alex?" "Oh, he went upstairs." Though he had never before even attempted to climb the stairs, he had managed to climb to the top, get through the door, close it, and walk over to the other side of the room to play with the CD's in about 2 minutes.
The following day, he decided to try going down the stairs head first. Fortunately, he only got down 4, but he got a nice scrape below his eye. It's funny too, because we try to keep both the bathroom door and stair door closed at all times, but he seems to listen for those doors to open, and when he hears the sound, heads toward them from wherever in the house he happens to be.
No fewer than 8 times, he has pulled food and drink items off the table onto himself. We now set the table with all plates, cups, and utensils 8 inches away from the edge, but still, some things get left too close.
Washing dishes is interesting too, because he loves the dishwasher and the garbage can. I have to open up the cupboard for the garbage, quickly scrape a single plate, close the cupboard, open the dishwasher, place the plate inside, and quickly close the door. Then I repeat the process. If the dishwasher is open for more than 10 seconds, Alex has found a way to pull out something--usually a fork. How does he know that this would be the worst item in there for him to play with?
I thought it would be all right for him to play in my Tupperware cupboard. He loves to empty everything out of it. No big deal, I thought. I'll just clean it up when he's done. But even that's not safe. He then steps on the items, slips and falls on his head. Oh, life is interesting with a one-year-old!
And then there are those plastic latches you can buy to keep cupboards closed. The first kind I tried was so effective, I couldn't get it open. You have to hold down two buttons at a time while pulling out a long plastic strip. Yea, righ! The second kind was easier to open, but I already broke one when I bumped into it with my leg, and it snapped in two. Rubber bands have worked fairly well.
This has to be it for now. He's crying to get out of bed.
