Danger zone

When Trey and I first brought Perrin home from the hospital, I remember thinking he was so incredibly fragile and that I would have to really stay vigilant to keep our precious baby safe. But here's a discovery I've recently made: the amount of danger a newborn is in pales in comparison to the amount of danger he's in once he starts crawling. It's really not that hard to protect a newborn. But a crawler? That's a whole other story. If he's not eating the laptop cord or pulling a lamp down on top of him, he's bonking his head for the 50th time on the coffee table.

Speaking of bonking his head... today he decided to try pulling himself up to a standing position using our ottoman. Even though I know he's not quite ready for that yet, I decided to let him try. How else will he learn to do it if he can't practice? And the ottoman's nice and cushy, and I was watching him from a few feet away. Safe as can be, right? Wrong. He pulled himself up to his knees, then for some reason let go of the ottoman. He fell like a tree, sideways, and smacked his head hard on the wood floor. I rushed over and scooped him up and kissed him and cuddled him until he stopped crying. Poor darling.

Then I sat him back on the floor, away from the ottoman so he wouldn't be tempted to try his stunt again. He wiggled his way over to the coffee table. No big deal. Then he suddenly lunged up onto all fours and hit his head on the underside of the table. Once again, he collapsed into tears on the floor. Poor, poor baby. We had put cushy corner attachments on our coffee table about a week ago. But I didn't really think to baby-proof the underside of it.

So, I'm really tempted to get Perrin one of those baby helmets that I used to think were just ridiculous. That, or strap pillows to him every morning and make him into a crawling marshmallow. Until I figure out how exactly to keep my little crawler safe, please don't be alarmed if you see him covered in bumps and bruises. I really am doing the best I can.

Look out, world!

Perrin is crawling. Crawling!! He's been on the verge of it for the past couple of weeks, and he suddenly just figured it out today and took off. SO CUTE!

First he crawled over to Jack, my parents' dog, and tried to pull his hair. Jack ran away. So Perrin crawled over to the bookcase and began knocking over picture frames. I set those safely out of reach, so he began pulling out books instead and even ripped out a couple of pages from one (luckily, it was a Curious George book, so nothing terribly important). Then he crawled to the basket of remote controls and threw those on the floor. (I scooped them up before he could re-program the TV to Spanish.) Hmmm... maybe this crawling business isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be.

Lessons in crawling

Perrin is sooooo close to crawling. He pushes himself up on all fours and rocks back and forth like he's trying to figure out how to make his legs take him places. This past week, he figured out that he could push with his arms and slide himself backwards across our wood floors. So while I can't technically say he's crawling, he's definitely mobile. On the down side, he's discovered our DVD player and has an overwhelming temptation to mash the buttons. But the good news is our floors are looking cleaner every day!

Today he took it a step further... watch and enjoy!