This morning after Marlo tossed her empty bottle three feet toward the end of the bed and then clawed her way on top of me almost head first over into the floor, in what seemed like a split second, I grabbed her by the legs, TO SAVE HER, turned to Jon and was all, um, what were we thinking? Because I know going into this I didn’t think this thing would ever move.
In just the last couple of days Marlo has put it all together and is crawling intricate paths throughout the main floor. Quickly. More quickly than we can childproof everything. Because with the last kid we just sat her on the floor, surrounded her with books, and then said we’d be back in a couple of hours.
You scoff, but now she’s reading encyclopedias. And has suffered only minor injuries.
This development has raised the chaos level in the house from Scary Jon Hair to Now Jon Has None. And the reality of having two children is now The Reality of Having Two Children. Before it was one who could entertain herself plus another you could turn your back on for more than two seconds. Now, it’s one who is very upset that the other one is touching her stuff and one who is trying to put the dog’s nose in her mouth while simultaneously touching her sister’s stuff.
This sounds so stupid, but I really never considered the brain machinations required to manage two mobile children. It’s just so different and, frankly, exhausting. There is always the nagging feeling that whoever is watching Marlo is not watching Marlo, and now she’s got the poker to the fireplace halfway down her throat. Note: that feeling caused me to move the poker to the garage, a childproofing maneuver that caused Marlo to stiffen her entire body and howl as if I had just rearranged her eyeballs.
Poor baby can’t play with the fire poker! Well, poor baby shouldn’t have learned to crawl! Fair-sies!
