The mobility has begun. Panic is sinking in.
While at work on Friday I got a phone call from Geralyn that went like this:
“Hello?”
“GUESS WHAT?”
“Ah! What?”
“SHE’S CRAWLING!”
“Who?”
“Samantha, dork!”
“Pull the other one.”
“No, I’m serious! She got her little knees up under her and now she’s on the move. She was on her playgym and now she’s almost to the kitchen table!”
“Good grief.”
“I know!”
“You know what this means.”
“We gotta buy a buttload of babyproofing stuff this weekend?”
“Bingo.”
We did not, it turns out, make it out shopping for babyproofing items just yet. I did, however, manage to take one cabinet lock we already had, affix it to the bathroom cabinet, and scream “PERIMETER SECURED!” Geralyn was neither amused nor convinced that Sam was safe from what has suddenly become The House That Eats Babies. So yeah, we need to buy new stuff. In the meantime, I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of this view of Sam.
Actually, the crawling shouldn’t have come as too big a surprise, since Sam has been sitting up on her own for over a week now. She can go from lying on her belly to sitting up pretty much whenever she likes through a series of grunts, scoots, and pushes. Here, I even made a visual aide:
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I told you once about our adventures trying to get Sam’s picture taken at the Wal-Mart (shudder…) picture studio, and how poorly that turned out. First the Wal-Mart fiasco took so much work and time, then the pictures were ruined due to “light contamination” during development. So this Saturday we tried taking her to another studio, and missed our appointment because they had blocked off some roads for a street party. So we rescheduled for Sunday and made it there on time, but the second we put her in front of the camera she started bawling until twin rivers of snot ran out her nose and her eyes puffed up like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Nothing would calm her –not singing, not funny faces, not daddy dancing around like a goofball with a threadbare Elmo doll. So we had to admit defeat and skulk away, at which point she instantly became the happiest baby on Earth.
I think God doesn’t want us to have Sam’s portrait taken for some reason we just can’t fathom. Maybe if we did, a butterfly in Guadalajara would flap its wings, and then all hell would break loose. Still, we’re going to keep trying. In the meantime, here are some pictures we took ourselves:
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See you next week.
Don’t worry too much. Part of exploring is also being told “no” and learning what is good and what is not. Amazingly, it sets in rather fast.