Climb Every Everything

First things first, Anthony would like to wish Happy Birthday to Grandma Dianne! He hopes she enjoys her cake and presents as much as he enjoyed his.

Meanwhile, the little guy continues his steady assault on our home. It's funny, because whenever someone asks if Anthony is walking and I again have to say no (because he's not, OK???), their next remark is, "You should be glad. Once he's on his feet, you won't have a moment of peace!"

Which is fine, except that on the motor skills development continuum (cute blob... cute blob that rolls over... %@!*, that's not where I left him a minute ago!... crawling... walking... running... climbing... sneaking out the bedroom window and stealing the keys to the car to go to a kegger...) Anthony has decided to abandon the useful walking in favor of the ever-so-unuseful climbing.

So do I have relative peace because the little guy isn't up on his feet? Not exactly. (Neither does Javy, who realizes he has suddenly lost his vertical advantage...)

Anyway, it's not like I can just plop Anthony in the living room and ignore him while I do my daily thorough cleaning of the house (Of course I don't do that! I ignore him while I sit in the living room with him and watch American Idol reruns on bootleg DVDs!) and expect him to be safe. In the blink of an eye, he's on top of the sofa or coffee table or end table or worse...

The tried-and-true technique:

(The second video could have something to do with the fact that our camera is currently broken. Anthony 2, Digital Cameras 0. Grandma Char knows what I'm talking about.)

The ensuing hijinks:

Guess which one of the above led to a bump on the forehead...

Fortunately, he can get down by himself:

But still, on the danger scale, walking is to climbing as canoeing is to white water rafting. In one case, you might fall down, but you don't have that far to go and your landing is likely to be soft. In the other case, let's just go ahead and set the over/under on Anthony's first broken bone.

Still, I do realize the not walking thing (which I'm completely cool with and not obsessing over at all!) does have its advantages... kneeling and crawling on the furniture has to be safer than standing and running on the furniture, right?

I guess this means we have to keep him?

When we were in the hospital having Anthony, they gave all three of us matching wristbands so someone who wasn't Anthony's parent wouldn't be able to take him home....because newborns and their crying, non-sleeping ways are such a blast that people were surely lining up outside our hospital room door to take our place. (I have the same theory about why you aren't required to show ID for your baby when you take him on a plane. Who would even consider enduring a flight with a baby if that baby were not their own flesh and blood?)

Anyway, I somehow managed to lose my wristband, something that probably isn't surprising to anyone who knows us. Also not surprising to anyone who knows us, Brandon was just a touch irritated. He was convinced that without the matching mommy wristband, we would be forced to go home empty-handed, leaving the little guy to cool his heels in the hospital nursery for a week or two until everything was sorted out.

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that darn Brandon...

Joking! Actually, the nurse (the same one who had the dubious honor of trying to teach me to diaper and breastfeed a baby; yeah, I'm guessing this woman wanted us OUTTA THERE, FAST) issued me a new bracelet with little ado and sent us on our way.

The point of this fond memory? Thanks to some photos our parents recently found, it is pretty plain to see that no mistakes were made.

Anthony and his Dad ...

Anthony and his Mom (I'm on the right) ...

Clearly, this little person is ours.

Anthony is 13 months old today!

Now that Anthony is a toddler -- albeit in name only, as crawling remains his preferred...OK, only...means of transportation -- he misses no opportunity to show how grown up he is. (Except, of course, for the opportunity to GET UP AND WALK ALREADY FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE).

Mostly, he's really starting to communicate:

He sometimes addresses Brandon as "Dada" or "Dad," and will say "cat" when he sees Javier (provided I sit next to him, point at the cat and bellow "cat, cat, cat, cat" as Javy stalks off in a manner that implies I am sucking away his will to live any of his nine lives). Alas, I remain the only family member Anthony hasn't addressed by name, unless you count when he's on the verge of a tantrum and every whiny noise comes out "mum, mum, mum." Charming.

But, as is the case for many of Anthony's peers, apparently, his favorite means of communication is the cell phone.

Mine or Brandon's. Not the fake ones we try to fool and distract him with. He loves our phones, and if they're in his line of sight, watch out.



As if the above isn't irritating enough, Anthony is apparently one of those people who, instead of answering the phone with a polite "Hello?" just picks up and says, "Yeah." Since I'm pretty sure people who do that also obsessively check their stocks while having dinner with friends and speed to the very end of the merge lane on the highway, thereby making everyone else come to a screeching stop as they squeeze in, I will do my best to break him of this habit.



I'm also doing my best on that walking thing, which, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, really does not bother me (can't you tell?)

A friend suggested I try holding a cookie just out of Anthony's reach to see if the temptation prompts a few steps. So I crouched down, baked-from-scratch-with-love cookie (store-bought graham cracker) in hand, a few feet away from where Anthony was standing at the coffee table. He looked at the graham cracker and his eyes lit up. My heart soared with hope.

Anthony promptly dropped to his hands and knees, crawled to me as fast as he could, grabbed the cracker and hightailed it outta there. Maybe next time I'll just use my cell phone as the bait.

Anyway, if you wonder why we keep the little troublemaker around, here are some of his cute "1-year-old" pictures. If I do say so myself, awwwwwwww....