Look out, world, here he comes

I read once that the silences in a journal can speak as loudly as its words. This is how I tell myself that it's sometimes okay to be a little quiet here. Our lives have been more than a little stress-filled lately, but we are all healthy and together and generally okay, so I really do try to stay grateful.

Matt just asked if I was hopping on the computer to announce the reason I probably won't be able to blog more than five words for the next couple of years. It's a slight exaggeration, but sometimes it doesn't feel like one. Isaac, you see, has decided to choose this particularly stressful month to begin crawling. I remember how much fun it was when Suzannah started to crawl, how excited we were for her to reach all of those milestones -- but a.) I know better than to want to rush that with the second child and also b.) Suzannah did not move this much when she was ten months old. Or possibly ever. I remember feeling rather weary when she flung all of my books off the shelf for the fifteenth time in a day, but she was also fairly happy to just sit in the middle of the mess she'd created and watch me clean it up.

What I'm saying is that my sweet little baby who used to just sit and be all, Hey! Look how cute and fat I am! has suddenly turned into Isaac the Destroyer. I left my happy, mellow little guy sitting in the middle of the floor one afternoon while I worked on starting dinner, and then I made the mistake of turning around for one third of a second; when I turned back around I saw my son's big diapered butt disappearing into the laundry room. I scooped him up just as he was about to dive headfirst into the dog's bowl. And that's how it's been ever since. It doesn't help that he has absolutely no interest in appropriate baby toys; no, he would much rather chew on the cords for Matt's laptop, lick the dog's face, pull his sister's hair, and try to race his mama to the electrical outlets. He looks like a happy little Komodo Dragon, all barrel-chested, swinging his meaty arms in front of him as he drags his body and kicks his legs.

We could also talk about how much fun it is to change a poopy diaper when he wants to be in any other position than on his back. I remember when the biggest challenge to diaper changes was that he couldn't keep his hands off his built-in plaything. I'm almost nostalgic for that.

Anyway, I'm exhausted, and I hear my own voice come out of Suzannah's mouth eleventy billion times a day: "No no, Isaac!" Today I heard her say, "Come back here, little boy!" I peeked around the corner (I'd been brave enough to dash into the next room for a moment) and saw her sitting on the floor behind him, one of his fat little legs grasped in both of her hands. It was almost like she was trying to walk a dog that was too large for her to manage properly. I'm sure it's only going to be a matter of days before he starts climbing up on the back of the couch and flinging himself off of it. Playgrounds are going to be out of the question until he goes to kindergarten, because my heart just won't be able to take it. I remember taking the kids to the park once this summer, and a tiny blonde boy -- probably not more than eighteen months old -- managed, in the second his mother's head was turned, to shimmy up some complicated climbing structure that was definitely not meant for those in the just-started-walking crowd. When his mama saw where he'd managed to climb she let out a panicked shriek and went running to his rescue, and as she plucked him from the bars I swear he winked rather wickedly at me. And I thought, wow, I wouldn't want to be his mother.

My in-laws are visiting next week, and we're so excited -- the kids will love spending time with their grandparents, and we'll enjoy it too, but I have to admit I'm so desperate for an evening out alone with my husband (no diaper bag? No kids' menus? I can finish a sentence and linger over a glass of wine?) that the thought almost makes me cry. I won't cry on our date, though. Promise.