The Dare Devil

It should have come to no surprise to me that a third son would be even more adventurous than the first two before him. Now I see what a cautious little thing big brother was as a baby. Shy, stayed close to mom type of child. Little brother was a tester of limits for sure. However, the baby has no match.

I now realize this is the child that will give me gray hair before my time. Sure life is busy, throw in a job where you take care of a few other babies while you have the opportunity to also care for your own new baby, things definitely speed up a notch. Still though, this baby is the busiest in all of that. He is in such a hurry to keep up with his brothers, our cousins and his peers who are much older than him, that not only is he trying new things every single day, he has minimal fear. Once he started army crawling nothing was off limits. He was on a mission to get into anything he could get his adorable chubby little hands on. That started everyone, his peers included, to put things up high where you’d think the baby couldn’t get at it. What does the baby figure out? Well he’s going to try with all his might to pull himself up and stand to get to that next level of mischief. Took him a day to master that one. Here we are a few weeks in to this baby cruising along furniture phase and he’s got it in his head that he doesn’t have to hold on to anything. Now the falls have started. Some are gentle back to the floor on his bottom. Some are him tipping over sideways with me diving to save his precious little head from hitting the floor. The last kind of him falling straight backwards or forwards as he gets brave to stand alone. The last ones make me just about cry because I don’t want him to get hurt but he’s in such a rush to walk that he doesn’t care. No amount of falling deters him from getting right back up and working at his ultimate goal.

At eight months old this baby is feeding himself, climbing slides and climbers, cruising along furniture, sleeping in his own crib and now obsessed with walking. At times I block off the kitchen so if he falls he’s in the living room where there is carpet. Somehow he’s too smart and pushes his slide or toy box, aka diaper box, to use as a step to get over such hurdles. Other dangerous feats of his are wanting to climb the TV stand. When I pull him away from that and block it he actually throws a fit. I think he’s too small to know to get so mad about being redirected but he won’t give up. His older brothers sometimes retreat to their rooms when they want to play cars or Legos. Activities that they know the baby will go all Godzilla at. That is when he is big boy crawling at baby warp speed to their doors as they shut it and will cry and pound on their door like a mini dictator. He knows what they are doing and wants to wreck it. It’s a baby’s nature. When he does things like this I just look at him and shake my head. He’s so busy and smart that it’s hard to believe he’s learned all these things in his little eight months. Without a doubt he is he family daredevil.