The young daredevil

Discover Marvin Gaye!

First, note the new soundtrack, care of my French blogging buddy. (As with the other soundtrack application, who knows how long this will last before some lawyer closes them down. Also, I'm not sure I know exactly how this works since the associated website is French - the French seem very adept at flaunting copyright laws - so I can't read much of what is on it.) Most important in light of the subject matter of this post, please note the title of the song.

As my recent posts suggest, Margaret is generally more interesting than Teddy at this point. After all, she talks a lot and, for better or worse, has started to voice independent opinions, some of which are quite "fascinating."

Teddy, on the other hand, has only recently started to do interesting things. Some examples. He's a pro at sitting up and has started to pull himself up on things (often followed by him toppling over when he gets too ambitious). He can "army crawl" pretty well to get around. He's getting better at putting finger foods in his mouth, although I always discover that he's dropped a lot more in his high chair than I would have thought. He's starting to babble - Da da da is a favorite phrase (prompting "Teddy's silly" from Margaret). He can, with varied success, clap his hands. At the very least, he seems to understand conceptually what he's trying to do. And he watches things around him, especially his sister, much more intently than he did before.

Many of these developments reflect his increased coordination and mobility. The problem is that these skills allow the boy to get in all sorts of trouble. Thinking way back (oh, a bit over a year or so) to when Margaret was in a similar stage, I don't recall being troubled by what she would go after. That has continued to this day, as my sister in Philly noted with some wonderment, since you can plop Margaret in a room with something to occupy her, and you won't feel concerned that she'll start fiddling with the electrical appliances or reaching for knives. It's not that those things aren't intriguing - working the food processor is such fun! Instead, Margaret just doesn't seem inclined to dive right at things that are trouble.

As for Teddy, well, in contrast to his sister, the boy does have a definite eye for trouble. Put him on the floor, and he'll immediately start heading, slowly at this point, towards some inappropriate and potentially dangerous item. Power cords? Love them. Crawling under things to get stuck in awkward positions? Great! We first suspected that he was a troublemaker when he started heading to the (unlit) fireplace every time we put him on the living room floor. At first, we weren't sure if he was exhibiting systematic behavior. "Does he really keep heading towards the fireplace, or is it my imagination?" That question was resolved pretty quickly after a few simple experiments.

At this point, the problem isn't too severe since he can't move quickly enough to get into real trouble before getting scooped up. But, boy, does he show serious determination. And once he gets more mobile, we mave have to seriously secure the house. For Margaret, in contrast, the kiddie gates ended up being a formality - she never showed an inclination to head towards the stairs at full speed. I'm not so sure about Teddy.