Baching It with My Toddler

Mommy dropped off Gwendolyn at school on Wednesday, then drove on away to her work in Norwich for the day. Micah and I were left in our bachelors' paradise to whoop it up and explore the house from the point of view of a sixteen-month-old. First was about forty-five minutes spent opening, climbing into, playing in, and closing the shower:

 Micah could get the door closed and opened from the inside by himself. Once it was closed and he was outside, though, he needed me to reach the handle to open it again. So the sixth step in every iteration (the first five being enter, close, open, exit, close) was to go get me from the kitchen and ask for help please--in clear sign language. Once I opened the door for him, he didn't care what I did for the other five steps of his routine.

 The other arena of strength training, flexibility, and stamina yesterday was the booster seat. Micah wants no more to be buckled in. If he's going to sit at the table, he wants to get into the seat himself and sit unbound by seat belts that no adult uses.

 And he wants to feed himself once he's up.

And he wants to prove that he's also unbound by rules of etiquette and toddler safety.

That move was just for the record. After I got the photo, he sat down again and resumed eating.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to explore the world of adult furniture with a toddler. And I have remembered what it's like to cross an important line into an age of slightly lower maintenance: While Micah played in the shower and on the chairs, I got a load of laundry done and dishes in and out of the dishwasher.

~ emrys