We're goin' mobile

Every time we discuss the trials and tribulations of raising a young-un with friends or coworkers, the response is nearly unanimous:

"Enjoy it now, because once they start moving, it's a lot more work," they'll blabber while my eyes glaze over and my thoughts drift away to pillow-top mattresses and delicious, but forbidden, movie theater popcorn.

"Oh, I'm sure," I'll agree enthusiastically, nodding my head vigorously in an effort to keep from falling asleep and drooling on their shoes.

Of course, as with most things that my friends say, I instantly discard their opinions as foolish. When I think of Finn moving, I think of running the bases, snowball fights and watching him mow the lawn while I sit on the deck sipping a frosty one. Far from "enjoying it now," I actually can't wait for that lazy poop-factory to get up off his diaper and start earning his keep. And as long as he doesn't turn out like Latarian Milton, I think it'll be just fine.

But it looks like enjoying it now is no longer in the cards for us. Apparently, Finn has been reading the emails from the baby-development-faerie and has decided to celebrate his 6-month birthday by hitting the front of the curve and learning how to crawl. Not full on, hands-and-knees, crawling yet. This is more elbows-and-ankles Ninja crawling. But it's enough to move him across the room.

I woke up the other night and he had completely unswaddled himself and managed to reach the baby monitor and was happily chewing on it. It was as cute as anything at 2 AM could be, until it occurred to me that watching him chew on electronics was probably not World's Greatest Dad qualifying behavior. That then led to the thought that we haven't baby proofed the house. At all.

We'd heard that the best way to baby-proof a house was to drink a bottle of tequila and crawl around the house on your knees. We've tried this multiple times, but after a bottle of tequila, we always forget what we were doing. They also say that you should pick drawers that are within your baby's reach and fill them with things that the baby can play with. The trick, however, is that they can't be the baby's things. They have to be "your" things, since that's what the baby wants. I doubt that Finn will be much interested in my Phish poster collection, but I bet he'll love my collection of antique pocket knives.

While we're on the topic of tricking your loved ones, I wonder if I could do the same thing for Kitty? Maybe if I put the vacuum cleaner in a drawer that she can reach, all of a sudden she'll want to use it. It's worth a shot. I tried to test her the other day by betting her that she didn't even know where our vacuum cleaner was. It was sitting about three feet away from her at the time. I won that bet.

Now that I'm a dead man, I'll leave you with this video of our son crawling. Be sure to tell him that I am proud of him and that I would've loved to have been around to watch him play guitar in the 2025 Motley Crue reunion (poor Mick Mars), but I just couldn't resist poking fun at his mom. Like our good friend Latarian says, "It's fun to do bad things."