New Worlds to Explore

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows we have an 8 1/2-month-old baby girl, Charis. Well, recently she entered a whole new era of baby-dom–crawling. She started crawling about 2 weeks ago, and late last week started to venture from beyond the center of the living room. Now she can make it to the bathroom in 30 seconds flat. The look on her face when she enters a new room on her own is priceless. To look at her, you would think she was a 6-year-old at Disney World for the first time.

Charis came to us nearly 4 years after our youngest child, so it has been a while since we did the “baby thing.” We also did the baby thing with the first 3 in 3 years, which means we never really had any “big kid toys” around to have to deal with like we do now. You know what I mean–Leggos and every other kind of toy with little pieces that an infant could easily chew on and eventually choke on. So the doors to the older kids’ rooms are regularly closed. We are vigilantly watching and listening to make sure she doesn’t go somewhere that could lead to trouble.

Did I mention, we’re old (at least I am). This means we get even more tired than we did chasing after the first three (and I never thought then that this could be possible 😉 The up side of all this is that this time around we have 3 very young people to help with the chasing.

The bottom line is that we wouldn’t trade all the chasing after Charis we have to do and the monitoring of her young ‘chasers” for anything in the world. (We might be willing to part with some of the Leggos and little toy pieces, though.)

Baby growing up

It’s hard to believe. Charis is already 8 months old! She’s got 4 teeth, and she is crawling (mostly military, but a few regular crawl strokes here and there). So she’ll never be that sweet still baby again (not that she was ever really that still). But she is so much fun, it is hard to get too sad about her growing up. With each month, she is more expressive, more curious, more loving. They all grow up sometime, but wouldn’t it be nice to freeze time once or twice to be able to go back to visit those tender moments when they were so tiny–sort of like holograms from Star Trek?

What is Fun?

Fun? The definition of fun is subjective as well as relative to where you are in life. For me, one thing that I’ve found fun lately is watching scenes from my new DVD of the A&E production of Pride and Prejudice that I got for Christmas. What’s even more fun is watching my husband get absorbed in the ins and outs of the movie.

Who is that masked man?

Who is that masked man riding in that snappy new Jeep baby doll stroller? Is it Ken? GI Joe? A Rescue Hero? No. It’s Robin, and that isn’t a baby doll stroller, it’s the batmobile. Nevin has taken to pushing his sister’s Christmas gift doll stroller about the house and outside with his toy Robin proudly standing where the baby doll would normally sit, and all 3 of the older children have now dubbed the stroller “the batmobile.” Really too funny. I would have never guessed this would be how the stroller would be used, but it has added a new bit of amusement to our lives.

Happy New Year

Wow! 2004 is here already. Have you noticed that the older you get, the faster time seems to move? I remember thinking a week was an eternity when I was a little child. Then, in high school, if someone said, “Get that to me a week from now,” I would think, “A week should be plenty of time.” Now, if I have a week to get something done, I feel much more pressured. Time is much more fleeting to me now. I think about the concept of time a lot when I hear my 4 year old say “We did that last year,” when she means “yesterday.” I am also reminded of it when I see my 7-year-old beginning to have a better understanding of how long periods of time really are.

Regardless of how quickly 2003 passed for you, I wish you the best in 2004. Happy New Year!