Bumps and Bruises

Its been a bad week for Jack.

He’s always partial to standing and walking over sitting and crawling. As soon as he discovered standing, that’s all he wanted to do. Then, he discovered that moving his feet resulted in transportation. We spent many hours walking around, hunched over, him hanging on to our fingers or thumbs. Two thumbs became one thumb, then one thumb became 0 thumbs. Now he’s a walking maniac.

He didn’t crawl until after he took his first steps, and it was a means to an end more than an event by itself. He wanted to stand, so he needed something to lean on. He crawled to the wall, pulled himself up, and off he goes. If not for the need for vertical assistance, he may never have bothered.

But, once he discovered crawling, he learned to appreciate its benefits. One key benefit is that he won’t fall as far if he slips while crawling. That’s a nice perk. For a while, he only knew how to crawl in a straight line. When he wanted to turn, he’d stop, sit  back on his butt, pivot to the proper direction, then start up again. Good stuff.

Today, Jack can navigate the entire house unassisted. He’ll stand up in the living room, walk around the sofa, go into the kitchen, then into the laundry room. Then he’ll turn around and come back out.

He also like crawling up the stairs, though that has waned recently. Sometimes he uses his knees, and other times he actually does lift his leg high enough to plant his foot. He used to work his way most of the way to the first landing. How, he does a couple steps, then becomes fascinated with the decorative railing and focuses his energy on that.

The last week has been brutal, and we’ve had to adjust. He’s so comfortable with walking that he doesn’t may much attention anymore. The first sign of trouble was when i sat him on the floor to drink his bottle with me. He pulled himself up, put the bottle in his mouth, then took off while drinking. Heck, I can hardly do that. Nothing happened with that particular instant. Later, though, he picked up a toy. Gina and I both saw this, then he took off at full speed with it in both hands, and ended up tripping forward. No damage that time either, but he didn’t enjoy it.

But, there has been damage in other incidents. He bumped one side of his head on a face board, the other side on a wall, and face-dived into a target resulting in a rug burn on his nose. (We weren’t there for that one… that was on the baby sitter’s watch.) Plus, he had a mosquito bite on his cheek.

What a week. It became obvious that we need to stay on top of him much better. We’re smart humans. We can do it.

Judy took him to the playground,very cognizant of the recent problems. She brought him to the playground so that they could play in the safety of the sand. What’s the worse that could happen in the sand? Well, Jack decided to bob his head while looking through the iron rod fence. Add two vertical lines to the mix.

Wow. Poor Jack. Fortunately, that has been the last accident. We’ve had an accident free weekend, though there are still a few hours to go wrong. As I type this, he’s running around the coffee table with Gina in tow. I’m making a big point of keeping him off all tile; no kitchen, no bathrooms. When we went to the park, I stayed off all of the sidewalks. When we went to the a pier, I let him walk freely on the cement, but I always had his back. This is usually not necessary; he’s a very capable walker, but taking it for granted. He has a real “get back on the horse” mentality.

Operation Bubble Wrap has commenced.