Game Day Dad

For us our child started walking around 9 months and this is fairly early from what I’ve read.   I’d just like to say you can never be ready for the increase in anxiety that comes with your first baby learning to walk.   Literally the first time they stumble from you holding them up a for a couple of steps your heart rate changes and doesn’t go back.   Your brain switches to a mode where you identify everything in your home that’s a possible fall hazard and your start to blockade off things to marginalize the damage possibilities.

It’s never enough.

Our poor little pumpkin is running around with a big black shiner a week before pictures!    She managed to fall perfectly in to the corner of a piece of furniture in a split second and bust  her eye.   Mom called me in terror while I was working and sent me several instant messages with pictures trying to figure out if we should go to the emergency room.   Luckily I happened to be with one of my co-workers who helped us determine it wasn’t  a big deal and no doctor necessary.   However here is what I hear about when you should get them checked:

1. If the swelling goes in to the body and not swelling outside.  Supposedly this is a sign of possible break or internal injury?
2. If it’s so close to the eye or temple that that you suspect they could have injured their eye or gotten a concussion.
3. If they don’t stop crying about it.   Our baby stopped crying after a few minutes and took a nap even though my wife was in terror.    But constant pain is a sign that it’s a real injury.

My suggestion on the house is to watch for furniture with sharp corners or sharp points close to the ground.   Your baby is going to take tumbles to the ground daily by the dozen and as long as they don’t end on a sharp point they should be OK!

A very interesting thing my daughter has started doing is pointing and talking about whatever she’s interested in.  It’s a sign that you should be seeing by around 9-12 months from your little one so I’ve been very relieved that she’s started and started early at that.    If you’ve been talking to your baby, asking them questions and performing repetitive learning tasks like you should you’ll see the same thing.       It’s very rewarding when it starts to happen and life starts to get really interesting.  

You are now communicating

At this point your little person is communicating with you.   Hopefully you’ve taught them “NO!” loudly means stop what you’re doing and perhaps look at your parent.   They might take off and try to do it anyway but they should be at this point.   Our munchkin will pause and slowly point at whatever we don’t want her to touch.   Testing us I gather.

My advice to you is the entire time from day one to talk directly at your baby as if they understand 100% of what you’re saying.  Ask them questions, point at things and talk about them and in general just look goofy.   For one it’s fun and most importantly your baby is learning!   Don’t simply hand them things when they get old enough to begin using their hands make them reach out for it.   All of these excercises strengthen your baby and lead to early communication.

As soon as your baby starts trying to pull up a little and wobbly standing while you hold them up the natural next step is to put them in the walker.    The whole idea of the walker for me was fun.   Watching our little girl stumble around in that thing not moving too far off.   Chewing on the attached toys and looking in general very entertained.   Because that’s what it is, entertaining.

Fast Forward Three Months

Toot no don’t touch that!  Crash!   Get away from that cat he bites!   AAAAAAAHHH she opened a drawer and pushed it closed on her little hand and is screaming.    OUCH she ran over my foot in the walker!

The baby walker is now like a little wrecking ball of energy powered by our daughter smashing around the house.   It seems like babies have a built in mechanism to go after the things you’d want them have least ordered by most dangerous first.    It’s wild and it’s crazy so you need to be prepared for it because as soon as they’re able to stumble around even a bit you need to baby proof your house.  Buy those little plugs to keep them out of power outlets, move anything breakable or easily knocked over out of the path of the wrecking ball.   As I understand it the safety latches you can add to your cabinets are quickly figured out by the baby and rubber bands wrapped around the cabinet knobs of the cleaning product counters is an effective measure because it requires strength to remove.    You literally have to protect them from themselves!

Bottom line is as soon as they get a little bit of a handle on the baby walker start preparing your house.

This subject is a lot of fun for me and I think a lot of you dads won’t need any advice on this front but it’s still fun to blog about given recent developments with our baby starting to babble out syllables, vowels and “da da” “ba ba” sounds.    We’ve got our baby on the “Your Baby Can Read” videos among other things and we’ve learned a lot on that front about what our interactions should be.   Do not be afraid to make a fool out of yourself and talk about nonsense to your baby at home or in public.   When they start babbling you need to talk back to them and encourage them to make those sounds so they’ll remember them and continue to develop.   The first few years are by far the most important for people to develop.  The video below shows our little one talking to me during feeding time and I talk back to her asking questions and being interactive in general.   I wish I had a better one at the time of thinking up this blog but this will do just fine.   She’s so cute!