11 Months

Dear North,

After 24 hours of walking, you think you are a big shot. Yesterday, as I made dinner in the kitchen, you played in the living room. I can normally see you the whole time or at least hear you when you crawl to the far end of the room. I should have known you were up to no good when suddenly not a peep was coming from you. This happens occasionally; it makes my heart pound in fear when I get to the living room and you are nowhere to be found. Then I'll see the tall metal lamp swaying back and forth as if possessed and find you have made your way behind the recliner to play with it. But yesterday, you were not in any of your usual hiding places. In fact, you were out in the open, but off the floor entirely. You had crawled onto the fireplace hearth and only your butt could be seen as your upper body was making its way inside the actual fireplace. You turned your head and gave me this big smile as if to say, "look what I found mom, black stuff!"

I removed you from the hearth and poorly attempted to block access to it by moving some large toys in front of it and hoped that you would just forget how you got up there in the first place. I returned to my cooking. A few minutes later, I heard our makeshift "gate" sliding ever so slowly across the floor. The gate is really a Radio Flyer wagon still in its box and we have it sort of wedged between the couch and the wall blocking access to the dining room. I made my way toward the noise to find you had escaped and were confidently walking across the dining room toward me.

From a parenting standpoint, I was in a pickle. Looking back on how I reacted, I chose badly because I praised you for walking across the room like a big boy. So it should have been no surprise that when I put you back in your makeshift living room prison you managed to escape three more times in the ten minutes it took me to finish dinner. Because I had moved the couch out to wedge the wagon box more securely, you found a new means of escape by rocking the heavy box toward you until it fell thereby allowing you to simply crawl over it. Kid, you are too smart for your own good.

The following day, I watched you jailbreak time and again and caught it on video.

With each month, the actual parenting of you is becoming more and more challenging. There are so many things you do that are hilarious and make your father and I want to fall over laughing. But some of these funny things are bad behaviors that we do not want to make into habits by positively reinforcing them with smiles and laughter. For example, you love to do raspberries while eating yogurt and even though I am often covered in yogurt spittle during one of your raspberry episodes, it still cracks me up. But I have to put my super serious mommy face on and swallow back my delight.

We are now paying the price for rewarding you with giggles, especially when it comes to changing your diaper. That first time your naked ass crawled off the changing pad and started a game of giggling chase what did I do? That's right, I laughed until tears streamed down my face. And it's still hilarious to this day. But it's also the reason changing your diaper is a real pain in the butt. I ask you though, how is it possible to get mad at a face like this?