Alex On The Go!

Alex outgrew his baby carrier about six weeks ago, and I tossed it straight into the trash like a dirty diaper.  You'd think I'd have been more sentimental about the baby carrier that transported both of my infant sons home from the hospital, but nope.  I couldn't even stand to look at the contraption any longer, with its falsely claimed ergonomic, zig-zag handle that wrenched my wrists and its vaguely hideous safari print fabric.  I hated this car seat carrier so much that you might be surprised to know that I registered for this very item, chose it out of dozens, nay hundreds, of other, far superior baby carriers, approximately three years ago.  I was obviously not in my right mind during that trip to Babies R Us, so completely deranged by all the pregnancy hormones and the bags upon bags of pistachios that I so craved during Andy's gestation.  Plus, registering for a baby is like way difficult.  Do you get the crib mattress with the ten year warranty or the fifteen year warranty?  And after you pick out the mattress, you have to choose a mattress pad, a set of sheets, and then a slim, rectangular sheet saver for *over* the sheet.  And then you have to decide whether or not the saver goes under the baby's ass or mouth.  Which will be the bigger concern?  Puke or pee?

Note to expectant mothers:  I don't know why anybody bothers with the baby mobiles.  Babies don't appreciate them until they're able to stand up and yank the damn thing down, at which point you just have to stick it in the closet anyway and occasionally yell at your other child for using it as a funny hat.

Anyway, these past six weeks without Alex in a carrier have been- difficult.  It's not just the fact that he's no longer easily transported from car to house and house to car, an act that could often be performed without jarring the poor guy awake, although this in itself has been a huge problem.  Now if Alex falls asleep in the car, we're all screwed.  Moving him without the carrier wakens him, and opting to just let him sleep unsupervised in the car while I go inside or run Andy into preschool seems to open a small bag of DCFS problems.  Aside from this maternal conundrum, though, the removal of the baby carrier has seemed to signify to Alex that he is no longer a baby, and he has thus surpassed Andy on the annoyance scale, a feat that I could not imagine happening until the day it did.  And it blew my mind.

Alex wants to be a big boy, and he wants his freedom.  At the library, I place him on the ground to crawl, and while assisting Andy with a kerfuffle involving another young child and a vigorous slap fight, Alex zooms straight off to the elevator, pulling down a whole section of books (the 800s in the Dewey Decimal system) and yanking a series of computer headphones out of their jacks whilst on his way.  At the park, Alex fights to be let down, and when I set him down, he makes it his mission to ingest as many wood chips, pebbles, cigarette butts, beer bottle shards, and eviction notices as he can (perhaps I need a new park).  If I try to hold him or keep him trapped in the stroller, he battles me, twisting and turning to be let loose like his brother.  He howls as if to notify other adults that I'm keeping him against his will and kicks his legs as if the motion itself would propel him outwards.

He is harder to watch than Andy, who can be a mostly obedient young man who at least has a working sense of boundaries- when it suits him.  I forgot what this late infant/early toddler stage entailed.  The other day, I noticed Alex was chewing on something, and I reached into his mouth to inspect.  I pulled out something white, a small rubber nub that I still have not identified.  As I moved closer to the light of the window to inspect, I heard him padding off, and when I turned around, he was standing at the toilet, bent over and splashing merrily around.  I pulled him out of the toilet, set him in the hall, closed the toilet, stepped back into the hall, and there was Alex, halfway up the stairs.  That kid is fast.  And maybe sometimes it would be best just to leave him unsupervised in the car, because at least then he's strapped in and unable to outwit my shoddy baby proofing.

Alex creates large messes with a single wave of his arm.  He is loud and demanding if he sees me preparing food and he can't yet eat any.  Alex is perhaps a future dentist in the making, as his favorite thing to do is jab his little hand straight into your mouth and harshly poke around your tongue and teeth.  Like most dentists I've met, his bedside manner needs a little work.  If the dentistry gig doesn't work out, he may also try for hair stylist, as he also really enjoys grabbing as little hair as he can and yanking.  Grabbing just a few strands of hair and yanking is, as he's discovered, much more painful and thereby more enjoyable than grabbing a huge handful and tugging.  That Alex, he's masterful.

I thought this summer would be so much easier with a toddler and a three year old, that having a two year old and a baby was the hardest stage and it could only get better.  Maybe I was right, and this summer will be more manageable than last year.  However, maybe I was oh so wrong.  Maybe now that Alex needs two proper crib naps as opposed to a couple of half assed baby carrier naps, maybe that's going to make my scheduling slightly more complicated.  And, yes, maybe it is way more difficult to watch a three year old and a one year old catapult off in different directions instead of just dumping the baby carrier somewhere while I keep my eye on the older one.

But, then again- with all of the pains in the ass presented by this stage of life that Alex has found himself in comes all of the many joys.  The two brothers playing together in albeit rare, but present, moments.  The funny personality of Alex that sharpens each day as he exercises his independence and experiments with his surroundings.  The new adventures that the two boys can now go on together, as a unit, even if each half of the unit requires one full unit of mommy attention.  The beginning word formations of my sweet little boy as he heads toward the baby exit into toddlerhood- I swear I'm hearing "mommy" and "daddy" these days, even if it's not super consistent.  And that remarkable love that grows with the baby- you fall head over heels for that newborn baby, but then it's around this time that your love magically triples by the day.  How is it possible?  I don't know.  But it's a good thing that the love grows so exponentially because at this stage, when they're all over the place and immune to any kind of reason or discipline- it's needed.