It isn't easy being 13 and a half months!

I feel as though in my parenting journey one of the biggest lessons I've had to learn is that children change.  They change all of the time and, what's more, you have to change alongside them or else your parenting skills fail.  Take this little munchkin...

Ever since he learned how to walk at nine and a half months he's wanted free reign of the apartment.  That makes me nervous!  I can't babyproof the whole apartment because, well, I just can't! Logistics!  And yet he's wanted his freedom.

 

Give Me Freedom!

So I reluctantly moved the gate a little further out from the livingroom and shifted all of the shoes to another part of the hall and closed doors and gave him that leeettle bit of freedom.  Which wasn't enough for him, no no, he wanted the whole hall.   And so I closed all of the bedroom doors and moved everything out of the hall way and blocked off the kitchen and let him run up and down the hall.  But that wasn't enough either, he wanted into the kitchen. 

 Specifically, he wanted to be in the kitchen with Mama, and he did not want to be in the kitchen in his high chair (which I tried) or in the playpen I brought in for this purpose (which you can see in the pictures).  He wanted to be free in the kitchen.  And I couldn't do it.  What if he touched the stove?  What if he stuck something in the CD-ROM?  What if he ate something he found under the fridge?  It was a big day yesterday when I discovered that if I sat him up on the bucket I use to store cat food in, he would sit quite happily, eat a piece of bread, and watch me.

And it illustrated to me how much I have difficulty remembering that he is getting older.  A toddler now, and not a little baby that I can put on a mat in the livingrom and run to the bathroom and he'll be in exactly the same spot when I get back!  He wants to go where I go, do what I do and be, well, a child.  And so every week it seems I have to pull myself back from reactive thinking and remember that he's growing up.