Curious Lawson

The house sat silently around me minus the whirr of a bzillion fans, the dog’s soft breaths and the cat’s low purrs as I cranked out email after email, having woken at the break of dawn to maximize my work time at home. A string of responses had come in from Members that allowed me to wrap up some loose ends before the little dude woke, so I sped up my typing, took a conference call with one hand while wrapping up a project via notebook with the other. Light sounds came from the nursery as I frantically made the most of what I knew were going to be my last few minutes, but even with all this multi-tasking – I hear it.

“THUMP.”

Hard pause. Every Mom knows to wait for that hard pause, count the number of seconds between the wails and cries, then assess the situation.

This thump? Was different. And his cries, not so much a wail but more of an alert and “holy shiz what just happened and Mommy please come fix it” situation.

I rushed in, leaving my caller, computer and sanity behind only to be stopped dead in my tracks.

The little dude…was.standing.in.the.middle.of.his.room.

Confused, I felt my body work in the right motions, comforting him, talking him through the incident, checking him over for bruises or blood, watching his body language as he told me his story. Then, it finally dawned on me:

He had….leapt?....jumped?....climbed?....fell? out of his crib. For the first time.

Damn those parents.com emails. Every time I get one the little dude took on the milestone they were providing advice for like a week later. If only I hadn’t opened this one…

To be honest, I’m still wrapping my head around it all, as I think he is too. We’ve been talking for hours about his fall from the wooden box. And his justification?:

“Be like Curious George, Mama.”

Damnit again. Another educational item that had backfired on me. I mean, what now? Move him to the toddler bed? Wait? See if he does it again and potentially have him get hurt? Move him too early? Of course there are loads and loads of advice out there, and I just don’t know what to believe. Hopefully my gut will be working tomorrow.

Because today, this is just another big milestone, and one I wasn’t ready for. Coupled with filling out his second birthday invites and I’m a hot mess.

It’s all going too fast, this amazing life with Curious Lawson.

If only we could be the man in the Yellow Hat and George – those two never seem to age. I mean seriously, George still scales all kinds of things and apparently, teaches these shenanigans to small children. That seems like a good gig…

So here’s the little dude and all he finds curious…may we enjoy every step (leap?!) of the way.