How to Lose a Baby in 0.75 Seconds

Nathan Jr has begun crawling. He's not crawling in the way you would expect to see a baby wiggling about in quadrupedal motion; instead imagine how an injured drunk might crawl toward a phone. It's more like that. Or maybe a walrus with a bad back flipper.

Bump and I have not been encouraging mobility, because we have two older children and are not that stupid. My mother has been doing this thing where she holds the baby upright by his hands and moves his feet, simulating a walking motion. We're trying to teach Lumpyhead and Lula to tattle on her when she does that. "Daaa-yud," we want them to call, "Gramma is trying to teach Nathan Jr how to walk agaaaaaain."

The tortured forward motion Nathan Jr currently uses morphed quickly from the "rolling with purpose" mode of transportation he used previously. When he began doing that - just a few days ago, I swear - I twice had a heart-stopping moment of panic because I stepped out of the room to grab something and came back to an empty expanse of living room floor. He was gone. Disappeared.

There's that half-second when your mind is racing and you're thinking "Ohmigod, someone broke in and stole the baby while I was in the kitchen." Then you hear a telling THUNK-SQUAWK THUNK-SQUAWK THUNK-SQUAWK of Doesn't Learn From Experience Baby, hitting his head repeatedly on the bottom of the loveseat.

I stuck. Pleaz to halp.