epic grin :)

My my my my my my MY! Where have I been? Last I checked The Ben was just learning how to sit up on his own, and now our little Energizer Bunny is crawling, standing, climbing stairs, chattering, cracking jokes, practicing trigonometry, punting footballs for the ‘Niners, and negotiating a treatise between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China (coincidentally, this past weekend under the watchful eyes of both his mother and grandmother, a certain little boy took a five-finger-discount on some clothing made in Taiwan from the Shop-‘n-Smile in Eau Claire, Wisconsin – full disclosure of the details concerning his arraignment have not been made public at this time).

These past couple of months have been busy ones for mom and dad with the remodeling of the main floor of the house taking us right up to the holidays, all in addition to some uncharacteristically late evenings at work and a couple different kinds of illness here and there. And then there was this little issue of raising a baby feverishly intent on extending our physical and mental reaches.

Two days before Christmas, as Ben and I went to the mall to get a head start on our last-minute shopping, Ben made me aware of his elevating body-temperature by demonstrating how he could ignite the clothing on his body. When I rushed him home to seek help from the only competent parent in our house, Anna took a reading from our poor little dude which topped out at 104.3 deg F! The doctor said he had roseola, which I am told is a baby-version of the measles, and isn’t much to worry about (unless you are a first-timer and have this certain rare weakness where you actually care about the people closest to your heart). Sure enough he sprouted a nice little rash and found his parents waking him up every three hours to pump him full of motrin-this and ibuprofen-that. But his First Christmas was largely sickness-free and boy are we glad he didn’t have to sit that one out! The toys from his haul have been well-played, except for the one mound of presents still in their packaging, as we are just now finding time to piece together the ridiculous quantities (on that note, can anyone please tell me why they have to attach the toys to their respective boxes and plastic doo-hickies with a hundred super-crazy-strength knotted metal wire ties and unbreakable plastic ropes? I mean, it can’t be to prevent shoplifting because how many 9-month-olds do you know – besides our Ben – that have ever tried to fit a 20-inch tall noisy, whirling toy monkey under their shirts as they pass Babies-R-Us security?)

And then there’s the crawling. Jeez! How can a guy go from sitting passively for months on end - eating a little bit here, sleeping a little bit there – to motoring across the room with an almost insane determination? What so furiously drives the infant heart? Well, as it turns out, it’s the stairs. And anything else in the room within 36” of the floor that shouldn’t be in a baby’s mouth. It’s almost as if he has been staring at the outlets on the wall and the lamp in the corner of the room for the past nine months thinking to himself: one day, when my muscles mature enough to let me move at will, I’m gonna get you and stick my toys in your sockets and pull that condescending lamp shade right off your bleeping stand! You’re mine, Mr. Lamp Shade! You're mine!

And now that he’s figured out how to stand up on his own, he’s graduated to attempting to free-stand and take a step away from safety. Lately he has been greeting us in the morning standing like a minimum-security prisoner in his crib, clattering his toys across the bars. No more sneaking past his room to quickly use the bathroom before granting his morning parole, no sir. Now that he’s not stuck in the horizontal he can spot your pajamas streaking past his open door which only intensifies his crying and instigates his scheming for things to get into later that will make you pay for your delayed retrieval.

Not that I’m complaining. Anna and I both enjoy the supplementary movement in our daily routines, and I think The Ben was all too ready for some additional excitement himself. As happy a baby as he was before the crawling began, he’s twice as happy now. And I have to reinforce this idea simply because I now know the weight of the truth behind it:

Ben is without doubt the happiest baby on the planet.

He is just so easy. You might find him crying in the morning when he wakes up and gets bored in his crib, and maybe once in a while during the day when he gets really hungry and his parents - okay, his dad – forget to feed or nap him, but other than that, he has an epic grin cemented across his face. The Ben is never merely content but always happy. Throw him a little peek-a-boo or fake sneeze or a smile of your own, and you’ll have a wide-mouthed giggling tot for a reward. He really gets animated. And I think he’s mindful of your current level of self esteem: for every smile his face emits, he gauges how much of a morale boost he thinks you need and adjusts the level of the smile accordingly. You feeling a little down? Had a rough go of it at the office? See Ben - he’ll make it better.

Have I thanked God around here lately? Boy oh boy, have I ever done something right to deserve all this. . .