Moving toward disaster

Happy Valentine’s Day to all those celebrating. I hope all parents are able to find a few minutes of well-deserved romance.

Mark and I have decided not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Our anniversary is not far away, so it’s worth it for us to wait a few weeks, when the dinners and flowers go down to standard prices and the valentine’s candy is on clearance. It works for us and it saves us money, but I still have to keep myself from drooling when walking by the bedecked flower shops.

In the past week alone, River has figured out how to descend a single step with comfort, he has flushed a toilet, he knows how to use my electric toothbrush, and now he’s heading toward movement that allows him to have two hands free, hands I’m sure will be filled with mischief. It’s funny how nature has designed this, to incrementally give the child more and more capabilities, to get the parents used to managing these freedoms step by step.

So far, we’ve moved along with the paces. I remember when it was hard to imagine him crawling, or how we’d safety proof the house, much less what we’d do when he could crawl up stairs. But it seems like the move toward walking is a whole different transformation. His ability to get into things will be magnified. His speed in getting from one place to another will increase exponentially.

At such times, I’m grateful for living in a small house. Two safety gates limit the area of his roaming to a very small square footage, enough that we can know what he’s up to. At least until he figures out how to open the basement door. Then we’ll have to figure out a creative way to keep him from falling into the dark, dank, creepy lower level. Maybe if he goes down there once, he’ll lose his desire to explore it again.