Crazy Kid Stuff

My baby now sits up.  He crawls, eats real food, and tries to stand, as well.  Next week he will be eight months old.  In two-thirds of one year he has managed to learn to do all of these things.  Truth be told, most of it has been learned in the last month or so.  Before then, he was mainly resigned to lying on his back like an upended turtle grasping at various shiny objects and working on his hand-eye skills.

But now he is mobile.  You can tell that these newly developed abilities make him very happy.  He is truly proud of himself as he moves towards top-heavy pieces of furniture and attempts to crush himself with them or as he squeals with glee when he grasps the power cord for the computer and proceeds to ingest it.  You can also tell that he is very much... a boy.

Right now his path of destruction is limited.  Without the ability to walk upright he can only manage to dislodge items that are grounded and somewhat light in weight such as our antique smoke stand or say, a swivel chair.  But you can tell he has his sights set on larger items - he is nothing if not persistent.  This is no real surprise to me.  I was a boy once and I even had the aid of a kid brother.  Together we managed to destroy almost every lamp, decorative wall-hanging, and expensive piece of furniture in our childhood home spanning the better part of two decades.  Play Australian Rules Football in the house?  Sounds like a great idea!  Smash eggs with a badminton racket?  Why not!

As a Father, I can understand these things.  They are not reasonable, but few things that boys enjoy are, really.  When I was a boy, I would spend the better part of an afternoon lying on my back and bouncing a racquetball off of the wall, up to the ceiling, and then back into my waiting hands.  Over and over again.  For hours.  This little exercise produced the most annoying rhythmic "da-dum" sound, which may explain why my mother always found so many errands to run on the weekends.

But as a woman, I am worried that Cari might not have the same shared-past type of lenses in her glasses that allow her to view these inherently stupid boy traits as amusing or even, endearing.  What will be her reaction the first time she turns a corner and sees Grey banging senselessly on the wood floors with the claw end of a hammer?  Might she be pleasantly surprised when she finds out that the reason there is water running down the stairs is because Grey has decided to find out just how many nerf balls he can stuff into the toilet?

Cari has an older brother, so it is not like she hasn't lived with this type of moronic behavior.  But he is 5 years older than her which means that she was not even born when his body of work had begun.  By the time she had enough sense to know that fastening the cat's collar to a plastic shopping bag was an insanely destructive idea, her brother had probably moved on to reading banned books and scheming on pubescent girls.

The other day as Cari and I were enjoying some cold, cold wine (don't ask) on the porch after putting our child to bed, Cari said, in an exasperated tone, "He is just such a...boy."  I didn't need any clarification - I instantly knew what she meant.

She said that she had been talking to our Godbrother, Gabriel, and that she was sorry to inform him that Grey was definitley a boy.  And most likely a heterosexual one as well.  "He flirts with women," she said, "I can feel my dream of having a little gay boy slipping away."

"Oh well," Gabe said, "we'll just have to remember that even though he may be attracted to women, we'll just have to do our best to love him for who he is."

This morning when I walked out of the house to go to work, I heard Grey begin to cry.  I hate to hear him that way, but I selfishly hoped that he was crying for me to come back.  He must have been, because Cari picked him up and brought him right outside so he could watch as I drove off down our street.  I can remember feeling that way about my parents, but I didn't know that it started that early.

I have to admit, it feels wonderful to be wanted in that way.  Different than any way anyone has wanted me to be around before.  I always understand when a pet feels that way about me, but I usually chalk that up to the fact that I feed them, therefore when I leave, they may be worried that they will starve to death.  But I don't feed Grey - not in a life sustaining way.  When I feed him it is more of an excersise than any true attempt at nourishment.  The reason he was upset is simply because he wanted me to be around and he became fearful my walking out the door meant that that was not going to happen.

As I drove away, waiving to Cari and Grey as they stood on the porch, I could see him studying me, studying the car and listening to the sounds it made as I pulled away.  I wondered what he must be thinking.  Probably something along the lines of, "I wonder how many rocks it would take to break all of the windows out of that thing."