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Last week marked the beginning of the
kiddo pulling himself into a standing position. Before, it was just to
the knees. Now it’s standing and wobbling. A lot of wobbling.
It’s funny, actually. He’ll crawl over to the couch, end table, or
even his playpen, and pull himself up. And he’ll stand there for a bit,
babbling and looking for things to grab or knock over.
But now the shrieking has started. He gets in that upright
position and then has absolutely no idea what to do. He wants out of
it, you can tell. Yet he doesn’t want to fall on his bum (even though
he has, and it was fine). A couple of times I have pulled him away to
sit him down on the floor. It isn’t terribly long before he’s in the
same position. That’s okay. I know he’s learning to balance better.
Another time I tried to get him to move sideways while holding on, so
he could scoot over to me. He mostly just lifted his feet and put them
down again. But once I grabbed his hands, he walked/wobbled his way
over to me.
It won’t be long. This kid may be walking by his birthday. Christmas
at the very latest. It’s all coming at us so fast. All of the changes.
The milestones. The learning. I can barely keep up. And if I don’t
write it down I’ll never remember. I’ve already forgotten when he
exactly first smiled, or giggled. In some ways, it’s not important. Yet
in others, for the writer and compulsive documenter in me, it’s
extremely important.
I feel compelled to leave records. I don’t know why. I guess I want
someone down the road to know us, to know what we were like. My
grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. I want them to see us as more than
just pictures on somebody’s hard drive or photos printed out and stuck
in an album. I want the Boobah to have our memories of what it was like
when he was a baby. Maybe he won’t care. But if he does, I want it to
be there.
It’s funny, that as a parent I’m much more interested in what
mothering was like for my mom. I always wanted to hear what it was like
for her before she got married. Who she was, what she did, what she
liked. But I never thought to ask her what it was like to be a new mom.
I never knew that it took her quite a while to get pregnant with both
of us, hence the difference in our ages. She had my granny and a host
of sisters-in-law, all of whom had many kids (granny - 9 living, and
many of her kids had an average of 5 or more kids) and could tell her
about handling a baby. It’s been well over 30 years for her, so I
relied more on a bevy of girlfriends, all around the same age, having
babies within a year or two of each other.
Our lives are different, yet the same. Being a mom has brought me so
much closer to my parents. I hope the kiddo is able to experience the
same thing.
But one step at a time. First, he’s got to learn to walk on his own. And it won’t be long…
Becky Scott is a writer and editor. She lives in San Diego with her husband and (soon-not-to-be-a) baby son.
Originally posted at misspriss.org
