Gaining Independence

It's a new world this morning: Mazin is crawling! Well, only backwards, and not very fast, but fast enough. Fast enough that I can no longer turn my back. Somehow babies seem to have a danger radar. I put him down in the kitchen to make my coffee, and he finds the cat food. I mean, he just heads straight for it! We sit down in the living room, where he used to perch peacefully by his toy basket, and he goes for the laptop cord. I look around and all I see are all the things that could be implements of pain or harm--or casualties of curiosity: stones in the plant pot, coffee table edges, DVDs. Did I read somewhere that ivy leaves are poisonous? kl;' bm,n ...Oh, and now he wants to type, too. I think these blog posts will become markedly shorter.

I'm trying not to overreact, not to run for him when I see him teetering on his knees by something harder than a pillow. He is bound to get bruised and scraped--it will help him learn. I will have to just be ready to comfort him, to assure him he can bounce back. Oh, it is so true that it's like having your heart walking around outside of your body. Or merely crawling... for now.